Understanding what can be accomplished through interorganizational innovations The importance of typologies, context and management strategies

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in collaborations, partnerships and networks as they have emerged as interorganizational innovations to address the integrated nature of complex policy problems. Understanding the variation in how these innovations work, as well as what they do, is an important step in allowing managers to understand better the implications and applications of these arrangements. This article provides a descriptive and functional analysis of the diverse types of interorganizational innovations with an eye toward achieving a more universal typology of the variations that exist. The article details the various applications for which these different variants can be used and the contextual factors that affect them. The typology and functional analysis is useful for decision makers to assess the types of interorganizational innovations they might want to adopt in a given situation.