What are the challenges, risks, issues, and benefits that SMEs face when deciding to make strategic collaborations?

Please mention the following topics:

• Costs and Profits from having these Strategic Collaborations

• Challenges faced because of the difficulty of applying it (expensive, time consuming, requires commitment)

• Ethical Issues and how to deal with conflicting interests

• Maintaining a Certain level of quality while having these collaboration

• Sharing Information and the reduction of Uncertainty with the transparency from the information sharing, and the risk of information sharing

• The cultural effect on collaboration 

• Negative effects of having a long term commitment such as having less flexibility in choosing suppliers

Where are those collaborations appropriate and when is it worth it to take the risk of going into these collaborations? (Specific Type of Suppliers...)

What are the reasons collaborative relationships fail and how could this failure be avoided?