Conceiving the collaborations in this way gave us an opportunity to think about their formation and performance in a more holistic way as a practicing manager might. Looking across all the cases the research team identified four overarching critical success factors that appear to strongly influence the performance and sustainability of these collaborations: leadership, trust, risk management, and communication and coordination. Leadership took a variety of forms and was exercised both by people in positions of formal authority and by others based on situation and expertise (Fletcher, 2003). Trust of two kinds was important: public trust in the essential transparency and fairness of the initiative and interpersonal trust in the motives and competence of the participants (Dawes, 2003). Risk management pertained to ways of managing, mitigating or avoiding external risks (that come mainly from the socio-economic, political, and technological environments) and internal risks (that stem from the nature of the project, the participants, and their relationships) (Prefontaine, 2003). Finally, successful coordination and communication relied on several kinds of information sharing (among staff, to and from leaders, and with the public) as well as both formal governance structures and informal problem-solving techniques(Gant, 2003).

These four factors were at work in every stage of development. The survival and performance of the collaborations seemed to rest more on these factors than on such elements as structural characteristics, management tools, problem focus, technology choice, or financial resources.