Boeing

Imagine for a moment that you're launching one of the most important products in your company's history. You plan to spend more than $8 billion to develop it, and it will take five years to design, test, and launch. In a universe of high-pressure projects, this one is about as intense as they come. Now imagine this: In order to meet aggressive deadlines, stay within your tight budget, and meet your strict quality-control requirements, your company has decided to let your suppliers design many of the product's most critical components.

Sound crazy? Not if you're Boeing, the leading U.S. manufacturer of commercial aircraft. In recent years, American aerospace know-how has migrated to international competitors; in 2003, Boeing lost its position as the global sales leader to Airbus, a European consortium. Yet instead of trying to compete with foreign expertise, Boeing decided to harness it by inviting 100 global suppliers to collaborate on the design, engineering, and manufacturing of the new 787 Dreamliner, the company's first all-new commercial airliner in 12 years.

A huge task, yes, but Boeing executives concluded that mass collaboration was the only way to create the kind of cheaper, more fuel-efficient jetliner that airlines want. The logic is simple: Boeing's key suppliers—including Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Honeywell, and General Electric—develop plenty of products for other industries and international markets, and their collective expertise is invaluable. "It would be arrogant to think that all of the best ideas and best technologies exist within the walls of Boeing," Boeing spokeswoman Loretta Gunter says.

Traditionally, Boeing design teams created drawings and sent them off to suppliers, who then churned out parts and shipped them to Boeing's factory floor, where Boeing workers pieced them together. Boeing called the shots and only invited suppliers to participate in the development effort at the final stages. For the 787, however, the company turned that process on its head.

Engineers from all 100 companies spent countless hours in face-to-face meetings and systems tests during the earliest stages of the 787 design process. Using sophisticated database software, they shared plans online—chatting in real-time, accessing and revising each other's designs, even conducting real-time simulations to test for future problems and incompatibilities.

Still, Boeing managers took plenty of risk: They had to pick the right partners, find the right ideas, and create a collaborative environment to ensure that their partners met deadlines. In many cases suppliers were fierce competitors, yet Boeing managers worked hard to convince them that if too much proprietary information was held back, the financial consequences would be