Not Just Cocreation: Exploring the Shifting Interaction Logics in Sustainable Innovation

ABSTRACT Sustainable innovations that address complex societal and environmental challenges require interactions between organisations. Yet previous research demonstrates that these interactions are not easy, and interactions themselves pose challenges. In this paper, we explore how organisations interact across sectors to develop a sustainable innovation. Specifically, we investigate coordination, cooperation, collaboration and cocreation as logics of interaction in the pursuit of sustainable innovation. An in‐depth case study of a unique sustainable innovation project with ambitions of cocreation reveals that all interaction logics are at play but dominate in different phases. We further trace the antecedents of shifts in the dynamics of dominant logics. Our findings provide important insights into how organisations can better engage in sustainable innovation by understanding the dynamics of interaction logics. We show how the normative ideal of cocreation is challenged in practice and that other logics of interaction are engaged in the pursuit of a sustainable innovation.