Purpose
Ensuring collaboration between partners involved in a collaborative innovation project is a challenge for project managers. This paper aims to highlight how taking a high-level learning approach can represent a managerial lever. In addition, it analyzes the impact of learning tensions in a partnership context.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper focuses on an explorative, longitudinal and in-depth analysis of the Innovative Solutions in Urban Systems project via a qualitative single-case study. The research is inductive and based on data from the field rather than a deductive application of theory.
Findings
Collaborative innovation projects represent a high-level learning case. Activity theory is suited to studying the dynamics of learning in collaborative innovation projects. Tensions can fertilize the front-end of collaborative innovation projects.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may be difficult to generalize. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the conceptual framework further.
Practical implications
This article provides a framework for managing tensions in collaborative innovation projects. The results provide also a process to implement all criteria of sustainable development in these projects.
Social implications
This article highlights to what extent collaborative relations can be developed between participants through a questionnaire with social responsibility attributes. The questionnaire allows to foster participants’ trust.
Originality/value
This approach is original because the authors consider that situations exist that, by definition, belong to “higher-order learning”. Through a case study, they propose a framework to manage this situation.
Les projets innovants collaboratifs sont le théâtre de tensions. L’objectif de cet article est de mettre en évidence que ces tensions, dans les étapes amont de ces projets, ont un intérêt managérial. En mobilisant la théorie de l’activité, les auteurs montrent qu’elles tiennent leurs ressorts d’éléments historico-culturels propres à chaque organisation. Et en s’appuyant sur une étude de cas (le projet innovant collaboratif SIRUS), ils mettent en exergue une méthode d’identification des tensions, puis explicitent en quoi elles peuvent, dans certaines circonstances, représenter un levier managérial.
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