T. Keith Edmunds

Bio: T. Keith Edmunds is an academic researcher from Assiniboine Community College. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 1 citations.

Perceived Barriers to SME-College Collaboration: The Case of the Province of Manitoba.

Abstract: Since their creation, community colleges have had a mandate to be responsive to their communities, often through relationships with local business. As globalization and technological advancements increase pressure on small businesses (SMEs), the role of colleges in helping these SMEs to innovate in order to survive becomes clearer. Relationships between colleges and SMEs, however, are often balked by a number of barriers as perceived by individuals within the college system. This paper begins to examine the relationship between these entities through a series of interviews with individuals within the Manitoba community college system. An analysis of these conversations reveals seven distinct categories of perceived barriers.

Exploring barriers to collaborative innovation in supply chains – a study of a supplier and two of its industrial customers

Abstract: PurposeThe purpose is to identify and explore barriers to overcome for developing collaborative innovation between a global service supplier and two of its industrial customers in Sweden.Design/methodology/approachThe research had an action-based research approach in which the researchers were interacting and collaborating with the practitioners in the companies. The empirical part includes primary data from multiple interviews, and two workshops with dialogues with participants from the involved companies. The use of complementary data collection methods gave rich input to understanding the context for collaborative innovation, and to uncovering barriers, to develop solutions for collaborative innovation. The empirical barriers were analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The analysis generated four broad themes of barriers which were discussed and led to conclusions and theoretical and practical implications on: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation in supply chains.FindingsThe thematic analysis generated four broad themes: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation. These themes where analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The industrial context, the understanding of innovation and its management created barriers.Originality/valueThe unique access to the service supplier and its two independent industrial customers adds a rich contextual framing to the process of identifying and exploring the barriers to collaborative innovation. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of an industrial business context, the business logic in terms of business models and for the understanding and management of collaborative innovation.