The best innovation teams don’t work alone. They bring in partners from different backgrounds, countries, and even industries to help provide fresh thinking and ideas. The process of finding and forging partnerships and collaborations, however, is not easy to do well. The best teams I’ve worked with have come up with a clever solution: They develop partnerships in much the same way they develop products. Rather than simply hiring vendors, the most innovative companies establish processes and frameworks that allow them to quickly validate whether a partner will be a good fit. They’ll get to work immediately, and focus together…

This story continues at The Next Web