How can small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) stay competitive in the future when the challenge from low-cost countries is getting more and more severe? One possibility is to enter collaborative settings with other companies and in that way increase the supplier capabilities. But, in that case, which factors are most important when creating efficient supply networks? Technical foresights and roadmaps exemplify several issues that are important to develop to be successful in the future, such as to have an environmental consciousness for product and production. It is also important to create collaboration between suppliers as a mean to become more interesting as partners for systems integrators. This is a process for small and medium sized enterprises in their efforts to meet the increasing global competition. Collaborations between independent enterprises are however not easily created. Several factors will affect suppliers’ ability to create these collaborative networks and make them strong enough to enable competitive strength towards threats from actors on the global market. This article describes the most important success factors for these collaborative networks.