It has been claimed that collaborative networks are the societal structure of this century. Nonetheless, low success rates often observed in the practice of purposeful collaboration suggest that our understanding is still limited. In this paper, I advance on the theory of collaborative systems, a systems theoretical approach to interorganizational collaborative relationships, critically investigating their nature. Based on the characteristics of social systems, I suggest an explanation to the low success rates observed in practice. Furthermore, I offer an alternative definition of collaborative networks according to the theory presented and discuss some implications and challenges to the discipline of Collaborative Networks.