Socialization and innovation: Insights from collaboration across industry boundaries

Industry convergence as a phenomenon forcing organizations to foster more open forms of innovation, such as collaborating with partners from different industries holds high potential for really new innovation. At the same time knowledge originating from a different industry is more difficult to transfer. Accordingly, organizations that are able to develop socialization between collaborating partners, increasing the understanding for one another's values and background, are able to benefit from enhanced knowledge processing. This paper draws on the concept of social integration and open innovation literature to investigate how socialization facilitates knowledge transfer in collaborative innovation. Based on expert interviews, we conduct in-depth case study analyses in six organizations performing innovation across industry boundaries. Our findings illustrate that organizations can develop socialization to facilitate knowledge transfer across industries by implementing innovation practices and routines. Moreover, the results reveal how distinct socialization effects facilitate the internalization of knowledge of a different industry, the externalization of knowledge to a different industry and the combination of knowledge with a partner from a different industry.