Capability Life Cycle tool to integrate external innovation

With increased globalization of all businesses, the reliance on external partners have become a key factor in all aspect of the business. The increased reliance on external alliances for continuous innovation is the new frontier for growing business in a hyper competitive environment. Lessons learned from decades of Logistics and Production outsourcing could effectively be combined with the separate line of research into business lifecycles to provide business managers practical tools to more fully leverage internal and external resources available to them. In this work, an Alliance-based Product Development Lifecycle (A-PDL) model is proposed, combining the existing internal models for product development with tools in building effective alliances. Understanding rewards and benefits for all parties and aligning longer term development directions with the external strategic partners are key foundations for a successful development partnership. Areas like IP protection, pricing, and schedule can be turned from negative pitfalls into glues that tie partners even closer. A clear comprehensive set of metrics established early can align expectations between technical staff and business managers to avoid unnecessary frictions though the life of the collaboration. This proposed overall framework is evaluated based on real industry examples and a set of future work is outlined.