Collaborative Business: The Game Changer inthe Global Economy

Over the recent years, there has been an increasing interest among researchers to understand the need and importance and effect of collaborative businesses, withina Businesscommunity and role of policymakers' circles in the notion of Business collaboration. The adoption of the Internet, the developments of the information and communication technologies (ICTs), the growth of the Web and its ubiquity and affordability, and economic factors have compelled organizations to examine their strategies and adapt their ways of undertaking business in a global environment. As a consequence, businesses have migrated fromtraditional practices to e-business, and new forms of collaboration have emerged, such ascollaborative networks (CNs) andcollaborative businesses.(CBs)The CNs and CB have appeared ina large variety of forms, such as virtual organizations, virtual enterprises (VEs), industryclusters, virtual communities, collaborative virtual laboratories and virtual organization breeding environments (e.g., Abreu and Camarinha- Matos 2008, Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh 2008). CNs represents collections of heterogeneous organizations, which pooltheir resources for a determined period of time cause in order to achieve a common objective.

The idea of CNs/VEs is not new and has been used in several industry sectors for many years. But the need has only increased due to Globalization of the economy.

Collaboration is the name of the game when it comes to successful research and development in all business functions to meet and anticipate customers' needs. "We want to get closer to customer; we want to do things so the customers don't go anywhere else". "We can't afford an R&D department although we want to be innovative and known for innovations in our businesses .We are excellent in few business functions but lackinnovations. Is it necessary to be involved in all business functions? Microsoft one of the most successful organizations does R&D in USA, software development in India and Manufacturing in China and sells through various agents throughout world. Had they been managing all the functions they would be burning all the energies it and may have lacked in innovations. Another Classical example of collaborative success is joint production of Bramhos by India and Russia. Both (above) are examples of success stories due to collaboration, in both of the above cases results wouldn't necessary have been same if they wouldn't be in collaborative business. This Paper focuses on need and importance of international collaborations within governments and within Businesses in the Era of Global economy.