Encouraging e-commerce collaboration through seed-funding consortia

Much still remains to be learned from online e-commerce ventures that will continue to challenge traditional conceptions of organisational collaboration. The Information technology Online (ITOL) research overall revealed how crucial it was to link alliances with business strategy, to devote time for alliance preparation and to have a clear outline of performance expectations, goals, and responsibilities. Some of the key lessons emerging from the ITOL projects overall was the need to work better on the role of the consortium, to understand beforehand the way in which the nature and dynamics of the particular consortium are likely to affect implementation, to achieve more effective group dynamics, to have each member understand what actual contribution they had to make, and to establish the collaboration structure and climate that enable collaboration trust and the utilisation of informal relationships to overcome any heavy reliance on legal aspects of partnering.