Abstract

     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.

Introduction

     Complex and radical innovations are, almost without exception, strategic achievements that demand the integration of expertise and efforts of diverse actors and are increasingly conducted as temporary joint projects between formal organizations (Czarniawska, 2018). These interorganizational projects bridge diverse actors in different geographical locations and provide an attractive environment to combine knowledge and resources for innovations that would not be achievable by any of the actors alone (Dougherty & Dunne, 2011). Earlier research has tended to view interorganizational projects from the perspective of the focal organization (Klessova et al., 2020), with less emphasis on (1) innovation projects that are conducted outside the control of any single organization (Phillips, 2015;vom Brocke & Lippe, 2015) and (2) how the actual knowledge creation, understood as a joint development of new knowledge among a set of actors (Bhatt, 2000; Gray, 1989; Nonaka & Toyama, 2003), is organized in these projects.

Conclusion

     This study aims to advance understanding of managing strategic projects by shedding light on organizing for knowledge creation in an interorganizational innovation project. Through an empirical qualitative analysis of an interorganizational innovation project that developed and applied novel ways of organizing strategic collaboration, this study advances understanding on projects in which knowledge creation is at the core. By bridging research streams of knowledge management and project management, this study focuses on knowledge creation as a core of organizing and targets organizing practices through which the actors enact and arrange joint knowledge creation and progress of innovation. The findings show that the identified iterative process, self-organizing WGs and dynamic participation are practices that foster joint knowledge creation and advancement of innovation in the strategic project taking place between organizations.