Exploring the Strategic Value of Interdisciplinary Collaboration: COINs in the Creation of Business

This paper presents insights from a business collaborative venture between three graduate students at The Savannah College of Art and Design. The concept for a collaborative business venture, which is called TRI-O Consulting, was created to enable the team to gain experience in developing collaborative innovation networks. Furthermore, the paper brings to light the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in business model development by offering an approach capable of integrating the perspectives of Design Management, the Business Model Generation Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) and the concept of Collaborative Innovation Networks (Gloor, 2006). The paper explores the contributions of these disciplines, documents insights from collaborative practice, and proposes a framework for developing interdisciplinary collaborative ventures.