Exploring practices in collaborative innovation: Unpacking dynamics, relations, and enactment in in-between spaces

In the field of innovation management, the study of collaborative innovation has focused primarily on the type of networks to support innovation, the modularity of the product's architecture required to engage actors in collaboration, the strategies for patenting and knowledge appropriation, and the public policies likely to stimulate collaborative innovation. But given that many efforts to collaborate collapse and fail to generate the desired innovative value, previous research needs to be complemented with perspectives on what individuals and collectives actually do when creating collaborative innovation as they engage in "in-between spaces", spaces between actors created by and simultaneously creating social interaction, to understand the practices that both form and constitute the collaboration. Through such studies, new knowledge can be created building on detailed insights about what ensues as different actors engage in interaction to innovate together and contribute to identifying levers to build collaborative spaces that indeed foster innovation. With this special section, we wish to encourage innovation management scholars to rethink their approach to collaborative innovation research by complementing macro-level insights with an exploration of the micro-foundations of collaborative innovation to gain a more nuanced understanding of collaborative dynamics, relations and enactment.