Identifying collaborative innovation capabilities within knowledge‐intensive environments

Purpose This article aims to identify the capabilities supporting the development of collaborative innovation within knowledge‐intensive environments. Design/methodology/approach Re‐considering the history of the ARPANET project as a vivid example of collaborative innovation, the article presents qualitative research from a historical case. Findings Within this framework, the article shows that benefiting from collaboration in innovation entails that the innovative organisation is capable of achieving (at least) the following tasks: to leverage complementarities between internal and external sources of innovation (design capability); to codify, capitalise and disseminate knowledge outcomes (knowledge management capability); and to align product and organisations in a dynamic way (adaptive governance capability). Research limitations/implications This contribution is limited by looking at a single case. On the premise that model generalization depends on extensive empirical data, the current article should be considered as preliminary/exploratory research that aims at identifying the capabilities supporting collaborative innovation within knowledge‐intensive environments. Originality/value The originality of this article is to look at a historical case to elaborate on a typology of collaborative innovation capabilities.