Abstract High market competitiveness and a lack of internal resources and knowledge make companies increasingly interested in open innovation, being the collaborative innovation projects with suppliers one of the most widely used initiatives. However, the collaborative process is difficult to manage given the diversity of factors to consider when mixing different organizational cultures, resources, competencies, and experiences. One way to support the process is through the management of related good practices. Therefore, based on a review of the literature and international standards on open innovation or collaboration, this document identifies five dimensions and 18 practices of the customer-supplier collaborative innovation process. The identification of these good practices allows the characterization of the customer/supplier collaboration process in innovation projects and allows the establishment of a reference framework for the creation of an evaluation model.

Benchmarking has become a useful tool for companies, enabling better decision-making and improvement of internal practices towards world-class performance. Nevertheless, concerning SMEs' innovation capabilities from traditional sectors, benchmarking applications have been scarce. This article uses a predefined metric named the "Potential Innovation Index (PII)", based on internal practices of the firms to compare innovation capabilities of two groups of similar SMEs from 2 different geographical, cultural and social contexts. Results were used to analyze similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses of the groups. Obtained results confirm the difficulties to innovate of this type firms, no matters the sector or country, as over 55% of the companies studied were evaluated as having a low innovative performance. However, regarding the index's constitutive practices, significant differences were found. Which leads to infer that innovation support strategies to enhance innovation must be adapted to the local context and culture.