Despite the enthusiasm for engaging in interorganizational collaboration to enable digital product innovation, firms often face challenges in integrating knowledge across organizational boundaries. Our research examines how collaborating firms use Interorganizational Systems (IOS) tools and project coordinators to overcome knowledge boundaries in different types of ideation tasks. Drawing on boundary-spanning theory, we conceptualize IOS tools as boundary objects, project coordinators as boundary spanners, and the interdependence of ideation tasks as moderators of the impacts of boundary objects and spanners on knowledge integration. Our findings suggest that IOS tools help overcome syntax and semantic knowledge boundaries by transferring and sharing information when the interdependence of idea implementation tasks is high, and project coordinators help overcome pragmatic knowledge boundaries by building reciprocity of innovation participants when the interdependence of idea generation tasks is high. Our research contributes to value co-creation literature by developing a boundary-spanning mechanism to explain the roles of boundary objects and boundary spanners in overcoming different knowledge boundaries to enable digital product innovation at the inter-firm level.

尽管热衷于参与组织间协作以实现数字产品创新，但公司在跨组织边界整合知识方面经常面临挑战。我们的研究考察了合作公司如何使用组织间系统 (IOS) 工具和项目协调员来克服不同类型的构思任务中的知识界限。借鉴边界跨越理论，我们将 IOS 工具概念化为边界对象，将项目协调器概念化为边界扳手，并将构思任务的相互依赖性概念化为边界对象和扳手对知识整合影响的调节器。我们的研究结果表明，当想法实施任务的相互依赖性很高时，IOS 工具通过传递和共享信息来帮助克服句法和语义知识边界，当创意生成任务的相互依赖性很高时，项目协调员通过建立创新参与者的互惠性来帮助克服实用知识边界。我们的研究通过开发边界跨越机制来解释边界对象和边界跨越者在克服不同知识边界以实现公司间数字产品创新方面的作用，从而为价值共创文献做出贡献。