Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp.

111, 2006
2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
www.organizational-dynamics.com

ISSN 0090-2616/$ see frontmatter

doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2005.12.004

Collaborative Entrepreneurship:

A Business Model for

Continuous Innovation
RAYMOND E. MILES

GRANT MILES

n our recently published book, we began

with the following futuristic scenario:
In early 2010, OpWin Global Network
LLP reported record earnings for the year
just ended. Total earnings for the partnership
come from the activities of OpWin member
firms and from external licensing fees.
OpWins performance during the past year
was driven by a continuing flow of new
products and services that found favor across
the networks multi-industry global technology markets. New telecommunications hardware, such as the full-color mini-camera
jointly developed by four OpWin firms,
was a major success in Asian markets, and
the fuel cell output regulator developed in
OpWins Czech sub-network was licensed to
both General Motors and Ford.
One of the several unexpected success
stories was OpWins voice-activated software system, originally designed for inventory control, but adapted by a New Zealand
member firm for cash-flow management in
the Southeast Asian financial services market. Other OpWin products enjoyed similar
cross-industry success in communications,
bioengineering, and nanotechnology.
All in all, said chief executive officer
(CEO) Kristen Morris, 2009 demonstrated
once again the power of collaborative entrepreneurship and OpWins ability to creatively find markets for both new and
existing products and services. Our strategy
rests on three basic principles: investing in
people; supporting a collaborative, entrepreneurial culture; and finding and growing

CHARLES C. SNOW

new markets around the world. If we can

continue to demonstrate throughout the network that all possible product and service
innovations will be explored, and that collaboration produces economic as well as psychological benefits, then I see no significant
limits to our growth. How are you going to
hold back 13,000 entrepreneurs?
Can such a scenario occur? We believe
that it not only can, but will occurprobably
even before 2010. The stage is clearly set: key
requirements of the total collaborative entrepreneurship model have already been tested,
one start-up company has been designed
using OpWins collaborative approach, and
numerous firms throughout the world are
interested in the potential of collaboration
to create innovative products and services
in areas where competitive-based approaches have come up short.

INNOVATION,
COLLABORATION, AND
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Over 70 years ago, economist Joseph
Schumpeter first advanced the argument that
innovation is the primary driver of economic
development. The value of creative destruction, as Schumpeter described the innovation process, has been confirmed recently by
William Baumol, whose book The Free-Market
Innovation Machine demonstrated empirically
that firm and inter-firm ability to innovate
explains why capitalist economies histori1

cally have the strongest growth. Despite its

usefulness for firm growth as well as a countrys economic development, innovation is
not an easy task for the typical firm. Indeed,
one survey found that chief executive officers
believe their firms utilize only 1525 percent
of their innovation capacity.
Even the most innovative firms have not
been able to fully utilize their innovation
capacity. Whether one focuses on HewlettPackard Co. in the 1950s and 1960s, Xerox
Corporation in the 1970s, Rubbermaid in the
1980s, or Intel Corp. or Cisco Systems Inc.
today, none of these firms has been able to
figure out how to innovate on a continuous,
efficient basis. Various organizational
arrangements have been triedcross-functional business teams, internal venture capital processes, creating or acquiring new
business units, spinning off new ventures,
and forming alliances with or investing in
partner firms. However, the best overall outcome from all of these approaches appears to
be the capability to engage in periodic innovation that is mostly limited to the firms
existing businesses. What is needed and,
fortunately, what is becoming increasingly
feasible is an organizational process that
will enable innovation to be continuous and to
occur outside a firms traditional industry
boundaries.
Many observers of todays business scene
agree that the most underutilized resource
among firms in advanced economies is
knowledge, and that the knowledge generation and sharing process needs to be opened
up considerably. The drive to turn knowledge
and other underutilized resources into economic wealth is what pushes managers to
experiment with new ways of reconfiguring
strategies, structures, and processes. We
believe that the search for the capability to
continuously innovate, currently taking place
more or less aggressively within numerous
firms around the world, will result in the
appearance of several new organizational
formsincluding the multi-firm collaborative network organization.
Collaboration is a process whereby two
or more parties work closely with each other
2 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. It is

a much more complex and demanding process than cooperation, where desired outcomes are relatively clear, and the
distribution of future returns can be negotiated. Collaboration often involves unpredictable outcomes and relies heavily on trust
and a joint commitment to values of honesty
and equitable treatment. Collaboration can
be directed toward any mutually desired
objective: solving a problem, resolving a conflict, creating a new product or business, and
so on. The concept of collaboration that we
see taking hold in a growing number of
business firms and other types of organizations is collaborative entrepreneurship: the creation of something of economic value based
on new, jointly generated ideas that emerge
from the sharing of information and knowledge.
Collaboration to create and apply knowledge for the purpose of commercial enterprise is very sophisticated behavior, in that it
is based on competence and experience,
intrinsic motivation, trust among individuals
and organizations, and the efficient, full sharing of ideas and information. Nevertheless,
as with any behavior, collaboration can be
taught and learned, and thus over time it can
diffuse throughout a society to the point
where it becomes a meta-capability. A
meta-capability is an abundant social asset,
and until a particular social asset becomes
widely available, organizations cannot tap
into it to operate their business strategies.
Collaboration among individuals and
groups is widespread in professional communities, occurring regularly among scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers, and other
professionals. Large-scale inter-firm collaboration, on the other hand, is a somewhat
recent phenomenon, but its origin can be
seen in certain case examples involving
actual organizations. For example, beginning
in the early 1990s, the small Danish city of
Kalundborg has been the site of an evolving,
successful program of industrial-municipal
collaboration that has been referred to as
industrial symbiosis. As of 2003, this crosssector collaboration had created financial

returns of over $200 million on an investment

of approximately $90 millionan average
annual return of over 16 percent. The source
of these returns is annual savings from symbiotic exchanges across a network of municipal agencies and private businesses. The
Kalundborg alliance offers evidence that a
voluntary, self-directed experiment can lead
to an expanding collaborative search for
value-adding approaches to the utilization
of resources.
Across the firms and government agencies that make up the U.S. civil construction
industry, a collaborative process has
emerged that has produced less carefully
measured but quite probably larger percentage returns than those of the Kalundborg
experiment. Initiated on an Army Corps of
Engineers dam project in the late 1970s, the
new collaborative approach established protocols detailing how, where, and when problems that inevitably arise from complex
projects would be handled. The program
resulted not only in reduced conflict and
litigation, but also in construction innovations that provided substantial time and cost
savings. Program leaders spread the program across state departments of transportation, and the partnering process (as it
became known) was subsequently endorsed
by national construction associations and
required by many states. Today, the growing
competence of U.S. construction firms in
partnering has increased their ability to
engage in new approaches to large construction projects, and partnering has become
both a firm and an industry asset. Though
limited to a single industry, the investments
in collaborative capability being made by
civil construction industry agencies, firms,
and professional and educational institutions
show the way for other organizations that
wish to engage in large-scale inter-organizational collaboration.
Neither the Danish industrialmunicipal
alliance nor the American partnering process
in civil construction represents an example of
collaboration as a true joint enterprise.
Although both examples involve business
situations, neither group of organizations is

focused squarely on the creation of new

products, services, or marketsand certainly not on continuous innovation. The firm
that perhaps comes closest to practicing continuous innovation through collaboration on
a large scale is the Acer Group. Based in
Taiwan, Acer has thousands of employees,
operations in 44 countries, and dealer relationships in more than a hundred countries.
With revenues of nearly $5 billion, Acer is
among the worlds top personal computer
manufacturers, but it is in the process of
transforming itself into a complete global
information technology company that in
recent years has started many successful ebusiness services.
Acer is a worldwide federation of companies held together by mutual interest and
collaboration. Some units of Acer are wholly
owned by the firm, while others (mainly
marketing and distribution firms) are jointly
owned by Acer and local investors. Both
types of firms collaborate willingly with
the other companies in the federation
because all firms have worked hard to
become the preferred provider in their particular technical specialty or market. Acer
helps its partner firms in other countries to
develop professional management, obtain
investment funding, and to become publicly
owned if they desire to do so. Acers form of
collaborative capitalism is steadily growing
in the global economy, particularly in emerging markets. However, while Acer is almost
able to be continuously innovative up and
down the value chain of the information
technology (IT) industry, it is still not adept
at innovating outside the global IT business.

OPWIN GLOBAL NETWORK

These three examples indicate that inter-firm
collaboration to produce continuous innovation on a large scale is practically feasible.
Therefore, it requires only a small conceptual
leap to imagine and then describe an organization composed of firms from different
industries whose collaborative abilities allow
them to pursue a joint strategy of continuous
3

FIGURE 1 OPWINS NETWORK ORGANIZATION

innovation. That envisioned organization we

call OpWin Global Network (see Fig. 1).
OpWin is a dynamic network of 60 member firms and their temporary affiliates. The
network is dynamic in that none of its members has a fixed role, and the resources of
each firm are often shared in business ventures with other firms, usually but not always
within the network. It is also dynamic in that
its membership has grown dramatically
since its founding, and the process of adding
new members is ongoing.
Each member firm joined OpWin as a
profitable independent entity, and it is each
firms responsibility to maintain its ability to
support and grow its own resources without
recourse to the OpWin network. In addition,
each firm is expected to contribute ideas and
other resources that will generate income for
its network partners. Firms vary in size from
less than a hundred staff members to a few
4 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

thousand, and each firm is expected to serve

all its stakeholders in an exemplary manner,
in line with OpWins stated pledge to set the
highest standards of customer satisfaction,
human resource management, and natural
environment sustainability. Each member
firm measures its own (a) net wealth creation,
(b) human resource retention and development (including educational and skill
upgrades of staff), and (c) annual customer
satisfaction. Member firms send this information to OpWins Central Services Office
(which provides educational, intellectual
property, information technology, and other
services to the member firms).
Member firms are expected to create
products and services for their own markets
and to work with other firms in the network
on innovation projects. Within their own
markets, firms pursue organic growth
through market penetration with existing

products or services, while attempting to

meet the expectation that at least half of their
revenues will be generated via continuous
innovation. Innovations in a given firms
market come not only from ideas and efforts
within the firm, but also from the continuous
scanning of ideas and innovations from other
network firms. Each firm describes product
ideas, development projects, and product
service upgrades in OpWins Innovation Catalog, an electronic database accessible only by
member firms. Not only do member firms
post potential value-generating information
in the catalog; they are also expected to
proactively contact other firms that might
have an interest in their ideas, projects, or
new models.
Firms in related markets regularly send
design, marketing, and operating staff to
OpWins Market Exploration Workshops,
which are held periodically. Moreover, firms
also collaborate across the network on development projects that do not have obvious
connections to their own markets. Staff specialists may be invited by another member
firm to visit and discuss a listed idea or
project, and they may in turn request additional meetings to provide elaboration and
possibly joint pursuit of an idea or project. In
some instances, a staff member from Firm A
may work with Firm B on a particular project,
even though it has been determined not to
have relevance in Firm As usual market.
When this occurs, Firm B pays for the staff
members time and effort. Further, if the
contributions from Firm A are later incorporated into a profitable product or service,
Firm B is expected to provide an appropriate
return for Firm A such as a royalty or onetime payment.
In all cases, OpWin firms are expected to
engage in joint development efforts without
strictly calculating the costs, benefits, or
potential returns in advance. It is the responsibility of the user to recognize contributions
and initiate equitable payment, and to make
certain that the provider is satisfied with the
outcome. On joint projects, it is the market
owners responsibility to propose a schedule of returns that is seen as equitable by its

project partner(s). Where new or shared markets are served by a jointly designed product
or service, the participating parties draw lots
in advance to determine which firm will take
the lead in proposing market-delivery
responsibility and an equitable distribution
of returns.
The heavy focus of OpWin firms on continuous innovation often limits their interest
in taking an active role to create wealth via
the long-term production of goods or services. In those cases, OpWin firms work with
outside partners to produce components or
even complete products for OpWin markets.
After assuring the market success of a product or service, OpWin firms may license
designs to outside partners for their own
long-term sales and service. Licensees, too,
are required to meet OpWins customer satisfaction and environmental standards.
To become a member of OpWin, a firm
must demonstrate its competence and trustworthiness. This can often be achieved by the
successful completion of a single collaboratively generated innovation project. At any
point, a firm can apply for membership,
which must be voted on by all members after
an OpWin review team has assembled a
sponsorship document. Alternatively, a firm
may be affiliated with OpWin on a temporary or infrequent basis, typically as a licensee
or other type of contractual provider.
In summary, OpWin member firms operate independently in their own markets and
in collaborative alliances with members of
the network to design and take to market a
continuous stream of innovative products
and services. However, OpWins alliances
differ from other alliances in several important ways. For example, OpWin initiatives
are based on ideas and activities that are
viewed as openavailable to all member
firms, with users responsible for acknowledging the source of their ideas and the
contributions of their partners. Also, OpWin
alliances are open-ended rather than specialpurpose, and rewards are determined after
the fact rather than in advance. Finally, roles,
responsibilities, and returns are governed
not so much by contracts (though these are
5

widely used) as by norms of equity and

collegiality, greatly aided by an agreed-on
set of operating protocols (such as user
responsibility for provider equity and satisfaction). Overall, OpWin member firms have
enjoyed great success to date by working
collaboratively with each other to find applications for their ideas and knowledge in
markets outside their traditional industries.

FROM FICTION TO REALITY

To this point, we have argued that, in the
future, collaborative entrepreneurship will
be a major business model, and that a community of collaborating firms linked together
in a network will be its supporting organizational model. In the case of one particular firm,
the future is now. An entrepreneur who has
started a number of successful business ventures, and believed that an OpWin-type organization was perfectly suited to a situation he
was aware of in the medical community,
formed a new company called Syndicom.
The focus of Syndicoms entrepreneurial
efforts is the community of spine surgeons in
the U.S. Spine surgeons frequently work on
very difficult and risky cases, and it is clearly
in the patients as well as the physicians
interest to have as much medical knowledge
as possible brought to bear on such cases.
Syndicoms first product was an easy-to-use
piece of software that would allow all the
doctors who were connected electronically
by it to comment anonymously on each
others most unusual or difficult cases. Prior
to the availability of this product, an individual spine doctor typically brought difficult
cases to the attention of a few well-trusted
colleagues who would comment by telephone or e-mail after viewing a faxed picture
or a mailed set of X-raysa limited and
cumbersome process.
Although Syndicom is presently less
than a year old, it has been successful in at
least two ways. First, its initial product is
very valuable, and interest and subscriptions
among spine surgeons are growing rapidly.
It appears that this product, and any follow6 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

on products that might ensue, will give Syndicom the financial returns it needs to survive. Second, and even more important,
Syndicom understands how the process of
collaborative entrepreneurship works and
how to manage the kind of organization in
which collaboration can be used to create
innovative products and services. For example, members of Syndicom worked closely
with the spine doctors to identify the objectives, both technical and behavioral, that the
product would have to accomplish. Continuing in the collaborative mode, the parties
developed a set of protocols that would
encourage the community of spine doctors
to use the product properly and thereby help
their geographically far-flung colleagues
improve patient care (Send in your unusual,
difficult cases; Reply promptly and constructively; and Close the loop by reporting outcomes and giving credit). Building
on its organizational strengths and early
successes, Syndicom is now pushing outward, first by attempting to develop innovation communities within other medical
specialties so that physicians can freely
exchange ideas and insights, and second,
by reaching out to related types of firms
(e.g., medical device manufacturers and distributors) that might play a role in future
innovation projects.

LESSONS LEARNED
As we discussed, the consensus of prior
decades was that barriers inside firms and
markets were constraining knowledge-driven innovation, and therefore efforts were
made to fix existing business models, organization structures, and management processes. Now, the emerging consensus is
that rather than attempting to rework old
approaches, the focus should be on creating
new models that open more avenues to collaboration within and across firms. Our fictional OpWin is one such model around
which firms like Syndicom can experiment.
Indeed, in a truly innovative economy, as one
venture capitalist told us, every entrepreneur

should be attempting to start his or her own

OpWin network. As he pointed out, the primary contribution of the entrepreneur is to
create new relationships among ideas,
resources, and marketsand where better
to practice this creative process than within
a collaborative network of firms operating
across industry boundaries.
However, the journey from conceptual
consensus to effective, widespread practice
will not be easy. Our observations of Syndicoms efforts, and our understanding of other
collaborative entrepreneurial experiments,
suggest that this new business model will
have growing pains similar to those of its
predecessors. At least four familiar challenges are already visible, and the pioneering
organizations that are grappling with these
challenges offer important lessons to managers who are considering the new business
model.

The Process of Collaborative

Entrepreneurship Can Only be
Learned Through Experience
Collaboration is a complex, potentially
fragile process, and it cannot be easily accelerated. The temptation, at Syndicom and
other pioneers, will be to cut corners if possible and to lock in whatever appears to
workwithout much reflection. Forty years
ago, such temptations doomed many business models focused on the pursuit of related
diversification because they short-changed
the development of an effective process for
decentralized decision-making. Similarly,
because it was easier and faster, many early
supply chain networks relied solely on topdown direction that limited the ability of
suppliers to make valuable inputs into product and process design.
While the designers of Syndicom and the
members of its knowledge-sharing community understand that collaboration is a voluntary, self-managing process that can only be
encouraged and facilitated, the temptation to
try to move participants quickly toward standardized practices is always present. Moreover, the temptation is strong to teach

participants rather than help them learn by

reflecting on their own experiences. To be
effective in the long run, collaborative communities must evolve at a pace that is comfortable to their members and in such a way
that members fully internalize necessary
behaviors.

A Firms Ability to Collaborate

with Other Firms Starts from
Being Able to Collaborate
Internally
It is likely that firms at the center of future
collaborative communities will be there
because they have developed a strong capability for collaboration inside their own
organizations. In OpWin, the community
grew when two firms with an ongoing, successful collaborative experience invited
another firm with complementary resources
to join them. The newly invited firm was
chosen not only because of its particular
technology and markets, but also because it
shared the core values of a collaborative
community. Firms signal their values and
their potential as collaborative partners in a
variety of ways, and managers who possess
collaborative skills can recognize and reinforce those values. Of course, one major clue
that a firm has collaborative skills and values
is the fact that it is already highly innovative.

Collaborative Ability Requires

Ongoing Investments in
Intangible Assets
Historically, many business models have
failed because those who adopt them ignore
the investments in soft assets that they
require to function as intended. Henry Ford
succeeded because he understood that he not
only had to invest in a vertically integrated
production process, but he also had to invest
in a workforce that was stable and well-paid
enough to learn and apply the specialized
skills the process required. We now know
that trust building is a time-consuming process, and that the development of collaborative capabilities requires not only learning
7

new values and behaviors but also unlearning many old habits. Still, it is possible that
many experiments with the collaborative
entrepreneurship model will fail because
the required investments of time and training
will exceed the expectations of even the most
well informed managers.
In the Syndicom organizational design,
there is no central owner. All participants,
including Syndicom, are investing voluntarily in a jointly owned process of collaboration. Although the company has no formal
means of measuring intangible assets such as
the ability to collaborate and develop and
sustain trust, there is a widespread intuitive
belief that certain intangible assets are valuable and are providing significant returns.

The Diffusion and

Sustainability of Collaborative
Entrepreneurship Hinge on
Societal Values
The collaborative model that Syndicom
has built will be sustainable only if the values
underlying it, and the outcomes produced by
it, are compatible. Maximally effective collaboration occurs among caring participants
who value the contributions of their colleagues and are concerned with their equitable
treatment. To sustain those values inside the
community, similar values must be exercised
externally, and desirable outcomes must
result. That is, the products and services
those communities produce must reflect
the same concerns for fair and equitable
treatment demanded within the community.
In OpWin, high-quality products and services not only are fairly priced, but every
stakeholder such as customers, employees,
and local communities benefits from
OpWins values and its philosophy of equitable treatment.
Highly competitive societies with strong
materialistic and acquisitive values run the
risk of focusing more attention on capturing
ones own returns from innovation than on
creating and sustaining real economic
wealth. It seems to us that the most successful
collaborative communities will be those
8 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

whose innovative contributions support,

and are supported by, strong social values.
Our anecdotal evidence, for example, suggests that there is currently more experimentation with multi-firm collaboration in
Northern Europe than anywhere else in the
world.

CONCLUSION
We have been most encouraged by the
response to our ideas and suggestions
regarding collaborative entrepreneurship.
We have presented our work in a variety
of settings, including business programs on
the radio, executive development programs,
entrepreneurship conferences, and M.B.A.
specialty courses. Based on these initial
experiences, we believe that the time may
well be right for broad experimentation with
OpWin-like business and organizational
models. Indeed, we are struck by two themes
that seemed to emerge in each of the various
audiences we have addressed. First, the
potential for collaborative communities to
enhance innovation-driven wealth creation
makes sense to those who thoughtfully consider it. In contrast to other recently proposed
ways of doing business, there has been very
little knee-jerk reaction to the collaborative
model as one that will not work. Multi-firm
collaboration does not hamper the efforts of
individual firms to innovateit simply augments those efforts by providing individual
firms which possess collaborative capability
a much enhanced competitive advantage.
Second, because it is based on positive
human motives and characteristics, the process of collaboration offers a much desired
respite from the constant concern that ones
innovative efforts will fall victim to a system
focused on the appropriation of wealth
rather than on its creation. We are fast
becoming convinced that many people are
simply fed up with the crass, exploitive, even
criminal behavior of managers evidenced in
the past few years. Collaborative entrepreneurship, in stark contrast, offers a way of
doing business that is exciting, productive,

and nonexploitive. Our experiences with

Syndicom, and our discussions with others
involved in collaborative community experiments, lead us to believe that the activities
and responses of those individuals are very
similar to those observed in the usual startup firm. The typical collaborative session is
characterized by those involved as interesting, if not exhilarating. The inherent rewards
of collaborative interaction in a trusting, supportive community are the driving force
behind the desire to conduct business
together.
To this point, Syndicoms communitybuilding efforts and other related experi-

ments have not yet demonstrated either their

sustainability or their full potential. Even
though the results to date have been positive,
we are excited as much by the scope of those
experiments as by their individual achievements. Such experimental periods in the past
have produced todays time-tested strategies
and organization structures, and it may well
be that a new business model for continuous
innovation is now entering one of those periods.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Our book Collaborative Entrepreneurship: How
Communities of Networked Firms Use Continuous Innovation to Create Economic Wealth
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2005) discusses the growing need for the
multi-firm collaborative network organization in todays global economy and the major
barriers that stand in the way of its arrival
and development. Our description of OpWin
Global Network shows managers and organizational designers how a multi-firm collaborative network can be formed and
operated. Also, all three authors have been
involved in various capacities with the development of Syndicom, and are tracking its
growth and management challenges in order
to learn more about the process of building
collaborative communities for business purposes. You can visit Syndicoms web site
(www.syndicom.com) and/or contact members of its management team for additional
information about the practicalities of community building.
For an overview of the process of collaboration, see the classic article by D. G. Appley and A. E. Winder, An Evolving
Definition of Collaboration and Some Implications for the World of Work, Journal of
Applied Behavioral Science, 1977, 13, 279291,
where the authors argue persuasively that
collaboration can only occur when certain
conditions are present, such as voluntary

relationships in which the parties care for

and are committed to each other. The network form of organizing is discussed by R. E.
Miles and C. C. Snow, Fit, Failure, and the Hall
of Fame: How Companies Succeed or Fail (New
York: Free Press, 1994). The various ways
that trust can be built among firms in a network organization, and the means by which
trustworthiness can be communicated, are
discussed in R. C. Solomon and F. Flores,
Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001). Successful collaboration
partially depends on how positive psychological capital is managed in an organization.
See F. Luthans and C. M. Youssef, Human,
Social, and Now Positive Psychological Capital Management: Investing in People for
Competitive Advantage, Organizational
Dynamics, 2004, 33, 143160. A good description of how collaboration works inside an
organization is given by L. L. Berry, The
Collaborative Organization: Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic, Organizational
Dynamics, 2004, 33, 228242. For the argument that European social values may be
more supportive of collaborative entrepreneurship than the values found in other cultures, see J. Rifkin, The European Dream: How
Europes Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream (New York: Penguin,
2004).

Raymond E. Miles is Professor Emeritus and the former dean of the Haas
School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. He
is also a former director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at UCBerkeley and has served as a visiting professor at numerous universities
in the U.S. and abroad. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management
(Tel.: +1 510 642 3860; fax: +1 510 643 1412; e-mail: miles@haas.berkeley.edu).

10 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

Grant Miles is an associate professor of management in the College of

Business Administration at the University of North Texas, Denton, TX
76203. His research interests focus on the role of knowledge, learning,
and collaboration in the process of organizational adaptation. He has
consulted with both U.S. and Canadian companies on various aspects of
strategy and organization (Tel.: +1 940 565 3469; e-mail: miles@cobaf.
unt.edu).
Charles C. Snow is the Mellon Foundation Professor of Business
Administration and chair of the Management and Organization Department in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State University,
University Park, PA 16802. He does research on global business strategy
and new organizational forms, and he has taught management subjects
to executives in over 25 countries (Tel.: +1 814 865 2463; fax: +1 814 863
7261; e-mail: csnow@psu.edu).

11