Changing Boundaries in Virtual (Open) Innovation Work

Co-creation and open innovation is changing the context for virtual work and the role of culture in boundary spanning. Organizations that are opening up to embrace a more open way of innovating often meet heterogeneous stakeholders. Culture in IS research is often analyzed on an organizational level, however, boundary spanning in innovation work calls for theorizing culture on several levels. This study addresses the role of culture in a boundary spanning innovation project within the newspaper industry where end-users and newspaper representatives collaborated to design a new e-service. We apply grid-group theory to unfold the complexity of virtual open innovation and conclude that stakeholders from both inside and outside the organization need to cross cultural boundaries to align themselves with other actors in order to help facilitate collaboration. The findings indicate that boundary spanners move between cultural positions based on differing cultural values in relation to other involved