Knowledge Sharing and Innovative Strategies in Organisational Collaborative Relationships: The Potential of Open Strategy
type: CreativeWork
description: Today’s challenges presented by a rapidly changing business environment can be met by collaborative relationships between businesses. Businesses can exchange or share key resources that companies are unable to develop alone. Knowledge is one of the most important organisational resources and one which businesses can share in order to increase their competitive advantages, under the right circumstances. Networks are one form of collaborative relationship being already well known and widely researched. Business ecosystems are an even broader conception of inter-company relationships. The two research streams, network theory and business ecosystem theory, complement each other. Whilst network theory focuses on structures, business ecosystem theory introduces the potential of different roles played by individual businesses in these networks and describes collaborative relationships as comprising of Keystones, Dominators, Hub-Landlords and Niche players. However, so far no comprehensive approach has been developed to describe the different business ecosystem roles, their influences and their strategies in distinct collaborative relationships. The aim of this research is to create a more detailed approach to the study of business ecosystems, focusing in particular on one role, the Keystone, operating in collaborative network relationships. In this study a literature review was first conducted, resulting in the development of a conceptual model. Expert interviews were used to enable the development of detailed multiple case studies, focusing on the Keystone role in distinctive collaborative relationships. The research offers a structured and detailed analysis of the Keystone role, its characteristics, strategies and knowledge sharing activities in different industrial sectors. Findings show that Keystones in both formally structured and more informally structured networks of collaborative relationships, behaved in similar ways. Only some minor differences were identified b…
abstract: Today’s challenges presented by a rapidly changing business environment can be met by collaborative relationships between businesses. Businesses can exchange or share key resources that companies are unable to develop alone. Knowledge is one of the most important organisational resources and one which businesses can share in order to increase their competitive advantages, under the right circumstances. Networks are one form of collaborative relationship being already well known and widely researched. Business ecosystems are an even broader conception of inter-company relationships. The two research streams, network theory and business ecosystem theory, complement each other. Whilst network theory focuses on structures, business ecosystem theory introduces the potential of different roles played by individual businesses in these networks and describes collaborative relationships as comprising of Keystones, Dominators, Hub-Landlords and Niche players. However, so far no comprehensive approach has been developed to describe the different business ecosystem roles, their influences and their strategies in distinct collaborative relationships. The aim of this research is to create a more detailed approach to the study of business ecosystems, focusing in particular on one role, the Keystone, operating in collaborative network relationships. In this study a literature review was first conducted, resulting in the development of a conceptual model. Expert interviews were used to enable the development of detailed multiple case studies, focusing on the Keystone role in distinctive collaborative relationships. The research offers a structured and detailed analysis of the Keystone role, its characteristics, strategies and knowledge sharing activities in different industrial sectors. Findings show that Keystones in both formally structured and more informally structured networks of collaborative relationships, behaved in similar ways. Only some minor differences were identified b…
author: Wulf, Anna
language: eng
keywords: Keystone, Business ecosystem, Network, Collaborative relationships, Knowledge sharing, Open strategy, Innovative strategies
date published: 2019-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:49:48Z
provider: University of Plymouth
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Plymouth