Using Fuzzy-Based Approaches on Partner’s Selection to Promote Sustainability on Collaborative Networks

Collaborative Networks (CN) are well-known by the literature, has a mean to achieve multiple innovations, resulted from the collaboration with a broad variety of partners to access different types of knowledge and skills. Despite its establishment, even in academia and in the corporate world, its implementation, constitutes a challenge, mainly when concerning to select the suitable partners to promote sustainable CN that attends the three dimensions of sustainability, regarding new product development’s (NPD) projects. The lack of decision support frameworks, as well as the subjectivity around CN’s manager’s perception concerning this issue, motivates the development of this work. Thus, this paper presents a soft computing-based approach to support CN’s managers on partner’s selection, regarding the NPD’s projects on CN’s context. The robustness of the approach developed here, will be assessed and validated through a case study, regarding the development of a green product.