Learning from previous cross-sector efforts.

By reviewing past efforts at collaboration in a similar issue area, partners can gain insights into how key structures, choices, practices, and processes may have influenced the effectiveness of those efforts. Partners may examine how previous collaborations structured decision-making processes, established open channels of communication, shared information, evaluated their work, and more. When choosing past examples, partners may also wish to consider how contextual variables such as location, collaboration size, or project time line are similar to or different from their own situation and what effect these may have had on the collaboration outcome. This review process can illuminate choices that may increase the collaboration’s likelihood of success and lower its risk of repeating past mistakes.

“Redeveloping the Riverfront in Detroit”

For decades, the riverfront in Detroit was dotted with run-down industrial sites, parking lots, and overgrown shrubbery, rendering it inaccessible to the general public. In 2003, a group of leaders from the Kresge Foundation, City of Detroit, and General Motors saw the potential for positive redevelopment and formed the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy (DRFC), a non-profit organization with plans to collaboratively turn five-and-a-half miles of riverfront property into a pedestrian-friendly walkway that would attract private and public interest in the space. To kick off the planning process, then Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick authorized a 90-day evaluation of past attempts at revitalizing the Detroit Riverfront by a 34-person group of stakeholders. The group reviewed at least a dozen studies dating as far back as the early 1950s and 1960s that had been conducted by real estate firms and prospective businesses to evaluate the redevelopment potential of the waterfront. They found that these plans never materialized and did not involve collaboration among multiple sectors. Participants benchmarked other successful waterfront redevelopments throughout the country and Canada to identify a set of best practices to follow in their elaboration of a revitalization strategy for the Detroit context. Participants wanted to ensure that any waterfront development strategy would be adaptable to Detroit’s climate and culture, and visited riverfront developments in Saint Paul, Toronto, Montreal, Chattanooga, and Cincinnati, among others, to gather lessons learned.

One potential source for practitioners seeking to examine previous efforts is case study libraries, which can provide detailed examples of how a problem has been addressed in the past through collaboration. We recommended the following case libraries: