Towards an operationalization of knowledge absorptive capacity for a collaborative innovation network

More organizations are conducting their innovation projects in collaborative innovation networks (CINs), enabling them to access to critical knowledge and jointly achieve their innovative targets. In this respect, they need to commonly deploy their absorptive capacity, that is to say acquire valuable knowledge from each other or from outside the network, assimilate it and apply it so as to reach their common innovation objective. While collaborative networks are becoming critical for innovation, no prior research has identified the absorption practices in this specific context. This paper aims to uncover this gap by proposing an operationalization of the absorptive capacity for a collaborative innovation network. For this purpose, we first conducted 3 case studies of CINs in mechanical, software and medical sectors that we qualitatively analyzed using N'Vivo, generating an initial framework of practices. Then, we organized two focus groups with researchers and practitioners to discuss and enrich our proposed operationalization. Based on a qualitative methodology, our results highlight the practices, that is to say actions and attitudes that enable knowledge absorption within CINs. Theoretically, it completes the understanding of the absorptive capacity concept by enlarging its scope to the context of a CIN