Inter-organizational Innovation Research Articles

REPUTATION AND TRUST OF PRINCIPALS AND AGENTS IN INTERORGANISATIONAL RELATIONS — THE CASE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH COOPERATION

Trust is the most important prerequisite for the emergence and effectiveness of interorganisational innovation cooperation, due to uncertainty and contract incompleteness. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the question of whether the trust of principals in a cooperation depends on different preconditions than that of agents. Based on a sample of 364 scientists from 100 German publicly funded interdisciplinary cooperations in medical research, we find that the trust of principals mainly depends on their partners’ reputation of ability, whereas the trust of agents on their partners’ reputation of benevolence. Surprisingly, culture- and personality-related factors prove to be ineffective. These results are of major relevance for the trust generation in innovation cooperation.

Evidence in Practice: How Structural and Programmatic Scaffolds Enable Collaboration in International Development

This inductive study of eight international development interventions analyzes mechanisms that enable integration of evidence in practice, a perennial challenge of learning and collaboration across occupational and organizational boundaries. We demonstrate how structural and programmatic scaffolding practices enabled actors from an array of organizations and communities of practice to collaborate and learn despite the uncertainty and complexity inherent in the international development context. These modular scaffolding practices offered temporary stabilization and support that fostered the counter-normative behaviors and mindsets required for continuous learning and adaptive coordination. Through 226 in-depth interviews with international development experts, including practitioners in eight matched interventions in India, Mexico, South Africa, and Ghana, we identified and analyzed mechanisms that explain the varying effectiveness with which evidence was integrated in each case. Our findings have implications for interorganizational innovation and collaboration under conditions of complexity and uncertainty and for dynamic interactions among individuals, their organizations, and their communities of practice when they are attempting to bring about systemic change.

How Did the Imperfection of an Innovation Project Come About? The Tension Between Legitimacy and Flexibility

Although current project management literature has claimed to learn from imperfect or failing projects, the process through which the imperfection of a project, in particular of an innovative-centered one, comes about remains unexplored. Based on a longitudinal case study of an interorganizational innovation project, the author developed a process model, showing that the project management team involved—consisting of well-integrated members of their permanent organizations—failed to manage the tension between legitimacy and flexibility by relying too heavily on traditional project management practices. This then led to an innovation project that was anything but perfect with respect to both process and outcome.

ГЕНЕЗИС МЕЖОРГАНИЗАЦИОННЫХ ИННОВАЦИЙ В КОНТЕКСТЕ РАЗВИТИЯ АКАДЕМИЧЕСКОГО ИНДУСТРИАЛЬНОГО ПАРТНЕРСТВА

Today higher education coexists in close relationship with the real economy under its needs. The generation of innovations by business and higher educational establishments is one of the most important factors in the economic development of the country. Academic industrial part-nership due to the obvious presence of the synergy effect of interorganizational engagement con-tributes to collaborative generation of innovations and their widespread application and implemen-tation. The “University”-“Business” cooperation model creates an academic industrial partnership en-vironment and also enables the synergy effect of interorganizational engagement. Thus, due to the relevance of the subject, it is proposed to distinguish interorganizational innovations as a different type of innovation. This approach requires the formulation of a definition of interorganizational in-novations and poses several questions to the researcher. What are interorganizational innovations? To what extent have interorganizational innovations been studied in Russian and foreign scientific literature? What are the characteristics of interorganizational innovations? Is it possible to manage interorganizational innovations? How to manage them? What place does interorganizational innova-tions occupy or can occupy in generally accepted classifications of innovation? The listed questions, some of which are answered in this article, determine the trajectory of further research. This study sequentially analyzes scientific works covering interorganizational innovations. The scientific nov-elty of this study is the complement of the existing theoretical approaches with the definitions of “interorganizational innovations”, “innovation management” in the context of interorganizational en-gagement as well as determining the trajectory of further research including finding the place of interorganizational innovations in the generally accepted and most relevant classifications proposed by relevant studies.

Sustainability change management in inter-organizational innovation networks

AbstractManaging sustainability-oriented organizational changes has received increasing attention in the international literature from the perspectives of corporations and universities. Nevertheless, researching sustainability change management (SCM) from the perspective of the cooperation of corporations and universities, especially the underlying factors of the cooperation, remained overlooked until now. Based on the change management (CM) literature, this research focuses on an international inter-organizational network with universities and corporations, and empirically studies their autonomous SCM characteristics and the collaborative planning dynamics of a sustainability-led innovation (SLI) project. Results show that SLIs cannot only come from SCM strategies, but emerging opportunities within inter-organizational networks could also induce them. Important contextual factors of CM, i.e., regarding strategy, structure, and capabilities, however, could and should be interpreted during SCM and SLI project planning, as these underlying factors force cooperation partners to compromise with each other in project scope. The results suggest that compromises could not undertake autonomous strategy alignment or capability building, only minor changes in the project scope which will still allow leveraging existing capabilities or require a few additional structural coordination mechanisms. The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting empirical examples of inter-organizational SLI challenges, deriving from autonomous balancing needs during SCM.

Mission invisible? Managing boundaries for flood protection

Although boundaries are typically seen as hampering inter-organizational collaboration, a lack of clear boundaries does not kindle collaboration either. This paper investigates how boundary spanners manage boundaries in inter-organizational collaboration. I draw on data from a 12-month ethnography of an inter-organizational innovation pilot between water authorities and utility owners in the Netherlands. The aim of this pilot was to improve the logistical and budgetary efficiency of renovations on dykes with underground utility systems, through collaboration between utility companies and water authorities. Findings show how pilot staff and participants were challenged by the invisibility of collaborative work: collaboration was undervalued, seen as a nuisance, and not as a core responsibility. Within the pilot potential measures of collaborative success and action were formulated, and participants learned about potential obstacles. This helped participants to see the potential of collaborative work clearer, and formulate collaborations that could move forward in acknowledgement of limitations. This paper contributes to the boundary work literature by proposing that managing the (in)visibility of boundaries is substantial to the competency of boundary spanners.

Towards a sense of urgency for innovation realization: a case study on complacency asymmetries in interorganizational relations

This paper seeks to explore the concept of complacency as a barrier to the sense of urgency within product innovation, by investigating the concept on behalf of interfirm project partners. More specifically, the study aims to understand complacency within the context of an industrial research project in Norway subject to material substitution of an energy transmission tower. As such, the study seeks to give a contextual understanding of complacency for innovation realization (e.g., innovation speed) from a single case study. The study identified different complacency mechanism asymmetries on behalf of the actors, as well as the varying reasons (drivers) to why urgency gaps may occur among actors. The urgency gaps were found to impact a sense of urgency and thus innovation speed negatively. The asymmetries are presented from the drivers: role understanding, competence, project intent, risk and trust. Moreover, the urgency gaps’ implications for interorganizational project collaboration, and how they contribute to theory on industrial product innovation, are explained. The findings contribute with new insights on important mechanisms for how a sense of urgency may be enhanced in research projects subject to interorganizational innovation. Theoretical contributions thus relate to enhanced understanding of complacency asymmetry in product innovation collaboration, and how trust is an important dimension for urgency creation.

Innovation and Inter-organizational Network: Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis

This article presents a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of research linking the inter-organizational business network and innovation research. It also discusses previous research on the subject and identify gaps for future studies. A review was done using the dimensions database. This was undertaken using specific keywords search in the title, abstract, and keywords of papers. The review revealed that the research in the field is growing fast. In fact, the paper has established that the UK, the US, and Italy respectively, have dominated publications in terms of the most influential countries for research in the field of inter-organizational business networks. The content review of papers showed that the papers were mainly trying to address the phenomena (the antecedents, management of the network, and network performance outcomes). These categories are not mutually exclusive but would help us to organize the fragmented literature on the topic. This article reviews and discusses the empirical literature on inter-organizational innovation networks and shows that the field is highly fragmented. While some areas have gained considerable research attention, others have experienced a relative paucity of research, and thus topics for future research are discussed.

Distance creates proximity: Unraveling the influence of geographical distance on social proximity in interorganizational collaborations

A vital ingredient for the success of interorganizational collaboration projects is strong personal relationships among the partners. Their formation is structured by geographical distances between partners. In the corresponding research, it is assumed that geographic distance inhibits face-to-face interactions, which are highly effective for tie-formation. However, findings from adjacent fields of research suggest that greater distances can also be conducive to the development of personal relations. In this paper, we unravel these contradictions. Empirically, we examine the development of 2132 personal ties between individuals from 20 government-funded interorganizational innovation projects using a mixed-method design. Statistical analysis of the data reveals a U-shaped correlation between geographical and social proximity. Contrary to common assumptions, large geographical distances are found to be particularly conducive to forming relationships. The qualitative data explains this finding by identifying and systematically relating five practices which are associated with specific distances and which are (differently) effective for tie-formation.

Cooperating in interorganizational innovation projects: Toward a better understanding of coupling with the permanent ecosystem

Innovation increasingly relies on a diversity of knowledge held by multiple partners who join their efforts within interorganizational projects. Engaging heterogeneous actors with different and sometimes conflicting expectations to collaborate is not without challenges. Works have already stressed the particularities of such projects and provided guidance for setting up and managing them. However, we know little about the influence of permanent contexts on the pattern of cooperation of interorganizational innovation projects. Based on a field study, this paper aims to explain how the coupling of the project with the ecosystem (the wider permanent context) frames the cooperative stances throughout project execution. We highlight the dialectical nature of changes in cooperative stances, which are driven by evolving degrees of coupling between project partners and the ecosystem. Hence, the coupling tightens as partners are more knowledgeable about the requirements of the wider ecosystem and share the overarching goal of resolving bottlenecks.

Serendipitous Learning in Collaborative Innovation in the Fight Against Severe Hypoglycemia

In the past decades we have witnessed an increase in collaborative innovation projects in the healthcare industry, and more recently some of these projects are of a broad pre-competitive nature where universities, research institutions, pharmaceutical, biotech and device companies work together to solve grand challenges in health. In this paper we investigate what organizations learn from participating in these non-commercial collaborations. Studies on open innovation, when assessing the benefits from such collaborations, have thus far focused on purposeful knowledge creating activities that lead to the achievement of planned objectives. However, in complex innovation where problems are often ill-defined, a focus on planned objectives and final outcomes, we risk ignoring important learnings that were not planned, but that instead emerged in the process. This paper argues that underneath the intentional knowledge building mode there is a more subtle ‘dwelling’ mode where intent is immanent in adaptive action and where new knowledge emerges in a non-deliberate way through everyday practices. To better understand the non-deliberate emergence of knowledge we apply a serendipity lens, suggesting that innovation and new knowledge creation can be seen as emerging and as accidental, unrelated side effects in collaborative processes leading to unexpected and beneficial discoveries. To investigate how organizations can embrace such serendipitous learnings emerging in inter-organizational collaborations, we carried out a 3-year study of an inter-organizational R&D project in the healthcare industry. We found several instances of distributed serendipitous learning and relate them to four organizational features (organizational setup, future-oriented mindset, sustained involvement, and heterogeneity in participants) that appeared to foster knowledge transfer from the inter-organizational settings to the focal company. The paper contributes to prior research on the roles and practices in knowledge absorption from inter-organizational innovation activities.

Stimulating Open Innovation Culture Emergence through Corporate-Startup Collaborations

An open innovation (OI) culture is crucial for successful inter-organizational innovation. While it is clear that an OI culture emerges in actual corporate-startup collaborations (CSCs), little is known about how these collaborations stimulate OI culture emergence in large organizations. To close this gap, we conducted 52 semi-structured interviews within a corporate accelerator. Our findings show that CSCs confront involved corporate employees from strategic and operative levels with different perspectives, working modes and actions. These demands pull their attention into different directions, resulting in tensions that create an adaptive space for OI culture emergence. Five practices help employees to navigate in this space and to integrate different demands, constituting visible signs of OI culture emergence. We contribute to OI research on culture and exemplify the complex cross-level nature of OI. We encourage corporates to engage employees broadly in CSCs, empowering them in realizing identified practices to convey openness into the organization.

Advancing Knowledge Creation in Collaborative R&D: Counterintuitive Dynamics of Individual Strategy

How can knowledge be efficiently exchanged in an inter-organizational R&D collaboration where people have to work towards shared goals and simultaneously safeguard individual interests? In this article we present the results of a longitudinal case study of an inter-organizational innovation team in which new knowledge was developed despite collaborative issues and individual strategic behaviors. Our analysis identified five interrelated practices at the individual level (interpreting, assessing, strategizing, expanding, and tolerating), that are enacted in the ‘trading zone’ (Galison, 1997) facilitating collaboration and knowledge exchange despite their different objectives, interests, and work practices. The study contributes to the trading zone and knowledge exchange literature by showing how highly strategic behavior of individuals can lead to collective knowledge creation. We thereby show how cognitive processes affect shared practices in the trading zone and how the trading zone practices affect the cognitive processes.

Organizing for knowledge creation in a strategic interorganizational innovation project

A fundamental challenge for interorganizational innovation projects is employing diverse actors’ knowledge, expertise and perspectives for situation-specific demands of complex innovation. Innovation advancement is dependent on the degree to which knowledge is used and synthesized to address emerging and situation-specific demands of innovation. The goal of this study is to shed light on organizing for joint knowledge creation in a strategic interorganizational innovation project. Based on an inductive analysis of interview data from one strategic interorganizational innovation project, we identified the iterative process, self-organizing working groups and dynamic participation as practices through which the actors involved arranged and enacted their joint efforts, namely, knowledge creation and progress of innovation. This study contributes to research on managing strategic interorganizational projects by suggesting that organizing, which involves structural and informal organizing practices, supports managing strategic interorganizational projects where the diverse actors’ knowledge integration is at the core of the innovation project's goals.

Inter-organizational Innovation Networks: An Approach to stay competitive in a VUCA World?

Inter-organizational Innovation Networks: An Approach to stay competitive in a VUCA World?

New development: Enhancing regional innovation capabilities through formal public service communities of practice

IMPACT The circular economy (CE) involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible—moving away from the traditional linear economy. The Circular Economy Innovation Community (CEIC) project, presented in this article, developed a novel programme to create regional inter-organizational innovation communities of practice for public service organizations across a region. Participants were introduced to contemporary tools and techniques to enable their organizations to reduce their carbon footprints, reduce costs and enhance service levels. The authors describe the way that the CEIC project has been able to create sustainable innovation communities of ‘change-makers’—enhancing regional innovation capabilities and supporting the transition to a CE.

Orchestrating innovation networks: Alignment and orchestration profile approach

This conceptual paper organizes and advances existing knowledge on the management practices of inter-organizational innovation networks by developing an orchestration profile approach. We utilize the principle of alignment to connect orchestration practices with the management requirements of different types of innovation networks. We explain that while goals and underlying value-creation logics differ in different types of innovation networks and, consequently, practices vary from network to network, generally applicable dimensions of orchestration can be identified that provide a useful analytical tool. By addressing the network types and orchestration dimensions simultaneously, we propose three innovation-network orchestration profiles, which we label translative, transformative, and transcending. These profiles are suggested to be generic and, as such, provide managerial heuristics for creating effective orchestration solutions for various innovation networks.

Collaborating for Organizational Innovation: Networking Across the City

Open innovation ecosystems play an important role in corporate and product innovation and contribute to the success of economic development at the municipal level, yet there is little research on the factors driving innovative behavior within a municipal innovation ecosystem (MIE). This study explores how the interpersonal and intrapersonal resources of the individuals involved contribute to innovative behavior within a city’s innovation ecosystem.This study used a mixed-method approach to build a novel framework to examine innovative behavior in the Mobile, AL municipality. A moderated mediation model was tested using PLS-SEM. The findings presented in this study introduce new constructs and measurements related to assessing innovation at the individual level in a municipality. The results suggest that innovative behavior is impacted by personal resources and that social events where people and businesses interact contribute to both inter-organizational innovation and the municipal innovation ecosystem.

Blockchain: an inter-organisational innovation likely to transform supply chain

ABSTRACT In current times, supply chains are gaining momentum because of customers’ many requirements, such as more flexibility, velocity, information, and traceability of products. Several factors can explain this phenomenon: the acceleration of technological innovations, which allow for better performance of systems and processes; globalisation of trade, fostering faster access to products for customers; and environmental responsibility, which drives customers to inquire about the sustainability of their purchases. In this scenario, the disruptive technology of ‘blockchain’ could be a solution to meeting these challenges. This system is characterised by high safety and traceability, and is becoming revolutionary in supply chains, which could have a substantial impact on companies. This exploratory study aims to investigate the current existing research on blockchain applied to supply chains and the main drivers and obstacles that companies face in implementing this technology. Interviews were conducted with ten companies to understand the motivations and risks of embracing this technology. The results show traceability and communication to be the main incentives for its deployment, while interoperability represents its main obstacle.

Collaborative Innovation as an Occasion for User Reflection: The Meaning of Relational Tactics

The literature on interorganizational innovation integrates various actors in a collaborative innovation effort to increase the capabilities relevant to the innovation. In terms of innovative organizations’ user involvement in the innovation process, the aim is mainly to learn about user’s needs, so the innovative solution can be tailored to meet these and thus have superior performance. The user innovation literature and the collaborative innovation literature in general are mostly focused on the motivation of the users to participate and on the performance of the innovation as such, which may also include the learning for the innovating organization. However, collaborative innovation processes are likely to have implications for other than the innovating organization and the performance output. Thus, in analyzing a collaborative innovation process between a digital solution provider and three hospital units, we find that clinical users’ participation results in their profound self-reflection. The paper identifies a set of relational learning tactic used by the digital solution provider, which are central to clinical users’ reflection on their own practice. Other than contributing to a better innovation output, these tactics foster professional users’ reflection over their own communication practices with patients.