It is an unchangeable fact that all industries in the world have to face the severe global competitions. This include all traditional industries in Taiwan which had created the "Taiwan Economic Miracle" in the past tens years. But most of traditional industries have been going to the end of their products¡¦ life cycle through long period. Facing the challenge of the global competitions and the threat of low cost from Mainland China, South-East Asia countries, and India, innovation is the only one method to help traditional industries get rid of the follower and keep long term competition. To increase the creativity in a enterprise is the way to maintain competitive forces. But it takes times, labors, and capital investments for accumulation and creation of technology. It also conceal a lot of risks. Therefore, the strategy of most companies will invest their resources on the sustaining innovation instead of the disruptive innovation. Because the sustaining innovation will not fail normally. But actually, The disruptive innovation is the real key point to decide whether the company can sustain or not in the future. The distinctive features of global competitions are that enterprises have to offer the product and service with low cost and differentiation compared with competitors. Here are many good traditional chemical companies in Taiwan share their 80% of R&D resources in the sustaining innovation and 20% in the disruptive innovation. Companies can reach their strategic target of lowering cost and differentiation through sustaining innovation. The disruptive innovation let companies to create a brand-new business for the future market. The 80/20 model can be as a reference for all traditional industries. The knowledge-creating companies utilize knowledge to build their wealth is the smartest method. And the R&D people possess the most important character in this sector. But R&D people also need to work closely together with other departments people in company to create synergy effectiveness. Because the different personal ethos of R&D people and characteristics of R&D works, the way how to promote the efficiency among the R&D people and other people is through the mechanism of knowledge management. In the era of Knowledge-Based Economy, step up the innovation of technology, accumulate and utilize the intellectual properties are the ways to increase the enterprises competitive forces.

Background: Innovation and collaboration are deemed popular terms that are widely used and agreed on. It is implied that innovation without collaboration seems to be unlikely (Deichmann et al., 2017, Haanæs et al., 2018, Innov8rs, 2018). However, the meaning behind innovations of disruptive, incremental, or radical character remains vague and presumably differs between practitioners, just as it differs among scholars. Also, the literature only implies how collaboration can be used effectively for innovation, whilst focussing more on what forms of collaborations are existing.   Research questions: How is innovation understood in the CIC? How does the CIC work together in order to realise cross-industry collaborations for innovation?   Purpose: This study aims at investigating the variety of innovation understanding and how it is applied in collaborations, based on the views of practitioners from different companies that are part of the Cross Industry Club.   Method: This research is designed as an exploratory case study and follows a qualitative strategy with abductive reasoning. Data is collected through nine semi-structured interviews with representatives from five different companies.   Conclusion: The study revealed that practitioners have other aspects in mind which define their understanding of innovation compared to scholars. By that, the usage of innovation terminology is rather arbitrary in practice. The influence of innovation frameworks on the understanding of innovation and the collaborative work have been revealed. Innovation in a cross-industry collaboration, in its purpose and characteristics, is similar to the work of communities of practice. Challenges that appear during the emergence of a collaboration like the CIC, and values that affect the initial work towards cross-industry projects, have been identified.