A threshold for collaborative innovation: exploring the dimensions of liminality in a data economy initiative

Abstract

Collaborative innovation requires space for different parties to meet, exchange information, engage in dialogue, and eventually create new solutions. Despite the increased scholarly and practical interest, understanding how such spaces are initiated and sustained remains scarce. In this study, we focus on a national data economy initiative to investigate a virtual and mental space where relevant and interested cross‐sectoral parties can join, share information and identify shared interests for research and development in the data economy. We investigate the early phases of collaborative innovation through the lens of liminality and show how individuals' sensemaking narratives manifest the different dimensions of liminality. We contribute to the research on collaborative innovation and spaces by theorising liminality in the context of our paper as a three‐dimensional concept of confusion–clarity, isolation–communal, and stagnation–movement that creates a threshold for collaborative innovation. Our study offers a more nuanced understanding of the less studied, yet critical, early phase of collaborative innovation, hence contributing to the research and practice of the emergence of collaborative innovation.