Roughly a decade ago, a coalition of industry leaders, businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations in an American city tried to pass a ballot measure for a tax increase. The tax aimed to raise funds for infrastructure projects that would ease traffic congestion. When the initiative flopped at the ballot box, the coalition rallied behind a newly elected mayor to devise a second effort. Together, they engaged with the community, figured out the reasons for their failure, and adapted their strategy. Two years later, a new ballot measure to raise taxes and improve infrastructure passed with bipartisan and cross-sectoral support, demonstrating how successful cross-sector collaborations can function.

Another collaboration that started around the same time was less successful. Launched by a retired teacher who joined forces with the public school system and a regional firm, it aimed to improve the STEM knowledge and skills of underserved students. The collaboration notched some initial wins, but when differences emerged among the partners about the schools that would be served and the long-term vision, the partnership succumbed to infighting and inaction. Funding dried up, and the nonprofit hosting the collaboration decided to stop doing so.

From creating economic and educational opportunity to ensuring public safety, the hardest problems that communities face require the knowledge, skills, and resources of multiple sectors, including government, business, and nonprofits. But as these two examples show, cross-sector collaborations (CSCs) vary dramatically in their success—and research to date provides only limited insight into what distinguishes effective from ineffective CSCs.

A study recently published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and supported by the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative suggests that how a collaboration reacts to setbacks plays a key role. CSCs that use failure as an opportunity to learn and adapt, like the first collaboration we described, are likely to survive and thrive, while those that do not, like the second, are more likely to flounder or fail.

Read the full article about cross-sector collaboration by Santiago Pulido-Gomez, Jorrit de Jong, Jan Rivkin, and Yamile Nesrala at Stanford Social Innovation Review.