The key role of knowledge intermediaries in the co-managed Innovation

In a complex and highly competitive global market, companies have to innovate faster than ever. To meet the new challenges of this economic environment, companies are adopting new approaches to their innovation strategies and processes (OECD, 2012).The main aim of this paper is to investigate what kind of approach firms can adopt in order to better manage the openness of an innovation orientation. In particular, how might firms select parties for knowledge transfer processes and transform them into partners to co-produce effective innovation. Findings increasingly show that collaborative learning characterizes co-managed innovation if founded on interconnected long-term relationships that outline the Epistemic Network. The innovation is generated and transformed through spatial relationships that are characterized by a different level of relational proximity