Towards Strategic Action Planning: Using a Collaboration Maturity Model to Support International Co-Operation in Research and Innovation

With the challenge to improve international co-operation in the area of raw materials research and innovation, especially between Europe and selected reference countries, the team of the INTRAW project came across several challenges. One of the challenges of the project consisted in the fact that action planning on collaboration could not sensibly be carried out without first categorizing the current state of collaboration as well as setting objectives on the state of collaboration envisioned. Existing approaches were not directly applicable in the context of international Cooperative & Support Action (CSA) planning addressing both company and policy level. Thus, considering the limitations of existing approaches and based on the capability maturity model integration (CMMI) approach, a generic and practical model was set-up to categorize the collaboration maturity already existing in companies, sectors and regions. This model allows categorization of the status as well as envisioned collaboration maturities related to single actions. The underlying methodology as well as the collaboration maturity model will both be described in more detail in this paper illustrated by reference to insights from the INTRAW project.