Collaborating to Compete: The Value of Trust and Inter-firm Cooperation (Presentation)

Ruth Campbell and Rob Henning presented, "Collaborating to Compete-the Value of Trust and Inter-firm Cooperation." The seminar was the 34th installment of the Linking Small Firms to Competitiveness Strategies Breakfast Seminar Series sponsored by the USAID Microenterprise Development office. The panelists discussed what relationships are in the value chain, why they are important, how they can be analyzed, and strategies to transform them. Inter-firm relationships foster both cooperation and competition which enable firms to respond to market demand and facilitate the transfer of information, skills, and services. Several examples were presented to demonstrate how relationships are assessed and how they can be transformed.