Innovation plays an important role in pursuing an organization's long-term economic, environmental, and social goals. An individual innovator may encounter issues, such as regimes of appropriability and complementary assets. Due to uncertainty in the process, innovation may be failed, inefficient, and/or harmful to supply chain partnership. In an attempt to maximize the benefits from a supply chain perspective, channel collaboration in innovation has long been in order.

Would collaborative innovation bring systematic benefits to supply chain members as well as the whole supply chain and the society? What is the best feasible mechanism for collaborative innovation?