Innovation doesn’t always have to mean new and cool; it could be just a new way of doing things to achieve better results. The more you bring your supplier into this process, the more successful your project outcome will be. Building more collaborative relationships with your key suppliers enables you to identify more improvement and innovation opportunities, encourage investment, and improve execution and success rates. Discuss how to further develop your relationships with your suppliers to extract innovation from your supply base, with the ultimate goal of having your suppliers want to be a part of your innovation processes.

• Overcoming ‘traditional’ buyer-supplier attitudes and perceptions of limited information sharing, trust, capabilities and understanding of partner needs

• Developing a preferred relationship with your key suppliers

• How deeply and how early in the development process can you have your suppliers involved? What’s best practice, what are the constraints, how do you ensure your suppliers follow your corporate protocol?

• How do you manage your supplier engagements in practice: how do you receive supplier ideas, how are other functions engaged, how do you staff the project team? How do you liaise between the supplier and the internal departments?