DETERMINACION DEL ESCENARIO APUESTA

In some circumstances collaboration is instrumental rather than expansive and may be more accurately described as a strategic alliance. In such circumstances individuals and social groups agree to work together for mutual benefit and so the collaborative practices can be characterised as pragmatic and temporary in nature. This vignette

illustrates how something that began as pragmatic, self-interested collaboration, transformed itself into something deeper and more sustained.

Initially, a large engineering company wanted to use rapid prototyping equipment available through HTC3 and associated with the Advanced Engineering (AE) Cluster Project. The aim o f the project was to demonstrate how to create prototypes for manufacturing new components in polymers instead o f using the traditional pressed metal. The Managing Director was disappointed when he discovered that the company did not qualify for assistance. The funding rules governing the HTC project limited them to assisting only SMEs employing less than 250 people. Although the funding rules for the project made it impossible for the AE team to help the company directly, common sense prevailed and some indirect help was proposed. Conversations with the HTC ‘AE project team ’ led to a mutually advantageous outcome where the very small companies in their supply chain were able to join the AE cluster project.

The project brought the AE's rapid tooling machine to the attention o f small engineering companies who tend to be conservative and traditional in adopting new ways o f doing things.10.

Through the use o f rapid prototyping equipment and access to specialised machinery in the University’s Advanced Engineering Unit the AE project was instrumental in changing the culture o f SMEs working in the tertiary level o f Rover’s automotive supply chain.

In the past most research and development was done at the first tier by the manufacturers, the second and third tiers o f SMEs who supply components, are increasingly getting involved in product development w ork71.

The access to specialist tooling equipment and expertise in the Universities was beneficial to the small companies who had virtually no budget for research and

development. They were suddenly able to develop new products using new equipment and by learning to use new technologies.

It has changed the way we handle product development, which always used to be done in house as we were at the top level in the 'pyramid'12.

The technical director o f the large engineering company realised that he could spend less money on ‘in-house’ research and development because he was now able to pass some o f this down the supply chain to the smaller companies. The large company benefited from Tower piece costs’, and lower ‘tooling costs’ which improved

efficiency and profitability because the SMEs in their supply chain gained the capacity to do their own product development. The SMEs in the supply chain also benefited because they had access to the tools to enable them to innovate and they had the opportunity to work with like-minded firms to develop new products and new markets.

These deeper levels o f cooperation strengthened relationships between the larger company and the smaller companies in its supply chain and the University. The project moved the relationship from an instrumental alliance towards a self-sustaining

‘partnership’. The emotional commitment to the object seems to be crucial to the development from instrumental collaboration towards more sustained expansive learning and co-operation. In terms o f expansive learning theory the rapid prototyping equipment acted as a conscription device to enrol small companies into collaboration with the University that developed the HTC project.

This supports the findings o f a study o f innovation in an engineering company two years ago, which reported that conscription devices, such as emotional ties to new work teams, helped to ensure a process o f co-configuration. In the development o f new engineering products ‘various design expert’ and user perspectives were integrated in the overall design (Ludvigsen et al., 2003 , p.307).

Co-configuration requires trust and the confidence to exchange views, which may not always concur. New insights were created so that the partners had faith in their capacity to achieve more together than would have been possible independently. In other words there was agreement that they could achieve more by working together towards a new, shared goal. This could be described in terms o f expansive learning theory as a process by which the boundary object was the tool that started chain reaction o f small collaborations leading towards more ambitious expansion and new objects o f activity.

However it is significant that the funding rules caused a problem that confounded the espoused policy aim. Only by working around the rules in an imaginative way could the HTC project team fulfil the spirit o f the HTC policy. This illustrates the points raised in Chapters Two and Four about the policy implementation gap.