The European Union (EU) promotes collaboration across functions and borders in its funded innovation projects, which are seen as complex collaboration to co-create knowledge. This requires the engagement of multiple stakeholders throughout the duration of the project. To probe complexity in EU-funded innovation projects the research question is: How does complexity affect the co-creation of knowledge in innovation projects, according to project participants? The data for this study was collected from project experts in the form of short narratives, using a questionnaire based on the elements of complexity of Mitleton-Kelly (2003). The results indicate that complexity characterises the co-creation of knowledge in innovation projects in various ways. Most emphasis was put on the elements Self-organisation, Connectivity and interdependence, Co-evolution, and Creation of new order. Thus, although this study demonstrates that the elements of complexity can be used to gain insight into innovation projects, the results show that not all elements of complexity are equally important in this context and that they appear in a certain order. Moreover, understanding the complexity of collaboration for innovation in relation to the input-throughput-output model of organisational communication is a contribution to theory that may help future projects achieve faster innovation.

欧盟（EU）在其资助的创新项目中促进跨职能和跨界的协作，这被视为复杂的协作以共同创造知识。这就需要在项目的整个过程中让多个利益相关者参与。为了探究欧盟资助的创新项目的复杂性，研究问题是：根据项目参与者的说法，复杂性如何影响创新项目中知识的共创？这项研究的数据是根据Mitleton-Kelly（2003）复杂性要素从调查表中以简短叙述的形式从项目专家那里收集的。结果表明，复杂性以各种方式表征了创新项目中知识的共同创造。最强调的是自组织，连通性和相互依赖，共同发展，创造新秩序。因此，尽管这项研究表明，可以使用复杂性要素来深入了解创新项目，但结果表明，并非所有复杂性要素在此情况下都同样重要，并且它们以一定顺序出现。此外，了解与组织沟通的输入-产出-输出模型相关的创新协作的复杂性，有助于理论的发展，有助于将来的项目实现更快的创新。