Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Ghassan Kbar
model, Stephen (2006) developed a survey with 15 questions that are focused of building trust,
solving conflict, meet the needs of partners, sharing information and experiences, respect other party
time, reinforcing the vision, monitoring the relationship, providing constructive feedback, how to reach
the proper decisions, addressing the hard time, and celebrating the accomplishments.
The current practice in almost all organizations doesn’t tackle the partnership issues fairly to attract
partners and investors to contribute to the development and investment cycles. In order to build an
effective partnership that is based on trust, a strategic framework that defines the vision, mission and
strategic directions has to be done first. Then a proper partnership culture should be prepared. A fair
partnership model would boost the trust and prepare the ground for best partnership culture.
Moreover, fairness is associated with fair in responsibility and commitment, fair in right and benefit,
and fair in distributing the rewards and celebrating the accomplishments. On the other hand, a
mechanism for assessing the value flows at the individual role level within partnerships has been
covered by Optimice (2008). Where, the fundamental process for creation of the Partnership
Scorecard is value network analysis (VNA). VNA identifies both tangible and intangible value flows
between identified roles in the partnership. In this way performance is assessed at the “role” level
enabling corrective or enhancement actions to be implemented directly. Fairness in development and
investment partnerships can be achieved by calculating the overall cost of the system associated with
these partnerships, and based on the contribution of each party there would be appropriate benefit. In
addition to fairness, there should be a proper incentive program which brings confidence and used to
attract the Venture Capital (VC) organizations or bodies to fund the project development. This has an
effect on improving the climate of investment and building the trust among researchers and the VC
bodies. In order to achieve this target, it is recommended to simplify the administrative procedures at
all institutions related to investment activity, intensify the advisory side to strengthen the confidence in
investment environment, solve the problems of corruption and mismanagement, and encourage the
foreign investment.
A partnership model allows funders to share the responsibility and profits where VC tries to facilitate
the work between the investors and funder by getting some financial reward for the funder that ranges
from 15% to 30%, in addition to around 2.5% for management expensive. This is unlike a bank loan
where the investors have to return the loan plus interest in regards whether the project is successful
or not, but in VC the investors would take all the profit generated from their projects. To build the trust
between funders through VC and investors and reducing the risk, the fund can be done in different
steps which can be aligned to seed fund phase, starting phase, growing and development phase,
transition phase, final funding phase and exit phase. There are some disadvantages for partnership
through VC, such as the involvement in managing the project which might direct it to different
direction that is the opposite to the will of executive managers, and the high risk that might be
associated with loosing the invested money in case of project failure. By looking at the case of
funding projects and companies in the development countries such as King Saudi Arabia (KSA), there
are around 700 companies or projects have been licensed but couldn't start because of the lack in
funding and expertise (Saudi-chamber 2011). To overcome this problem, these projects can be
evaluated to attract funding through Venture Capital program, where proper partnership models that is
based on good incentive and fair sharing of profit and risk can be adopted. The role of government
has facilitated the VC funding for small and medium projects to minimize the risk (Saudi-fund 2011).
There are advantages of funding projects through partnership compared to loan funding which
includes the following: partnership commitment according to participation, the ability to distribute profit
among partners according to level and amount of share, the possibility of partner exiting the projects
by selling its shares. However, the disadvantage of partnership model is the possibility of stopping the
execution of the projects in case some partners can't commit to provide the agreed funding. Funding
projects through Incubators and Science Parks can be done to support innovation (Sophia-antipolis
2011), (Galbraith 2002), and (ncsu 2011). Science parks at development countries are facing
difficulties in attracting companies to have partnership and to fund the technological projects. These is
related to lack of trust among investors in the research outcome, lack of knowledge in Venture Capital
funding, some of the legal constraints that discourages the investment in technologies, weakness and
lack of management skills, and lack of fair partnership models. In the following section VC project
funding at KSA would be analyzed to determine the obstacles facing its progress, and in section III,
fair partnership models are presented to attract investors and innovators to work together.
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