In this paper, collaboration between organizations of a similar level of care, such as primary healthcare practices, is labelled horizontal collaboration, and collaboration between organizations of different levels of care, such as primary healthcare practices and hospitals, is labelled vertical collaboration[ 20].
From an empirical perspective, some studies have found a positive correlation between horizontal collaboration and innovation (Quintana-Garcia and Benavides-Velasco 2004; Najib and Kiminami 2011), while others did not find any evidence that horizontal collaboration was significant explaining innovation among SMEs (De Propris 2002; Freel and Harrison 2006).
"Chaney implies that Chanel was just guilty of horizontal collaboration; I think it was definitely more," she said.
For marketing innovations, horizontal collaboration with colleagues and vertical collaboration with buyers is most frequently observed in this study.
For product innovations, horizontal collaboration is found to be hardly important.
A study by Parida et al. (2012) pointed out that for SMEs, vertical collaboration is relevant for radical innovation, and horizontal collaboration is appropriate for incremental innovation.
The main type of horizontal collaboration occurs in planning of health services.
Besides the vertical collaboration observed among stakeholders from the community to policy-making levels, horizontal collaboration and integration were discernible within each of the three levels.
For clinics already accredited as FMGs in 2005, whose level of horizontal collaboration within LHNs was already considerable, collaboration levels did not change in 2010 (82.9%).
Vertical and horizontal collaboration among key institutions, professionals and stakeholders is vital and should be better regulated.
