Conclusion: building collaborative capabilities

The aim of this volume is to explore how history can help us to understandmore fully the nature of those factors that undermine orenhance the effectiveness of inter-organisational relationships and toprovide guidelines for participants in these types of ventures. Theauthors believe that the past is a valuable laboratory in which toexamine cooperative phenomena because, unlike a perspectivefounded solely on current practice, it enables us to see the outcomesof experiments conducted by others. Moreover, historical analysiscalls for the ‘contextualisation’ of the experiments, and the sensitivitythat is required for this exercise—and the enhanced powers of intuitionthat stem from it—are useful in gaining a ‘feel’ for how these agreements really work.