When the Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts: Harnessing Collaborative Innovation for Tackling Societal Challenges

Collaborative forms of innovation, such as innovation contests, hackathons, and collaborative crowdsourcing, are often praised for their potential to bring diverse actors together to share perspectives, resources, and ideas. The promise of these approaches lies in the belief that the combined efforts of multiple actors can generate outcomes that exceed what each could accomplish individually—turning the ‘whole’ into something greater than the ‘sum of its parts.’ Yet, in practice, many initiatives fail to live up to this promise. This dissertation examines how collaboration can be fostered and sustained across the different phases of the innovation process when addressing complex societal problems. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, I explore three underexplored aspects of collaborative innovation. First, I study how individuals in collaborative crowdsourcing integrate their knowledge to generate new ideas. Second, I investigate the organizing of open innovation, unpacking the temporal interplay of openness and closure in addressing societal challenges. Finally, I focus on the implementation phase, examining how actors adapt solutions to local circumstances while maintaining coherence with the broader system. Together, these studies offer theoretical and practical insights into how collaborative innovation can be effectively organized to address complex societal challenges.