Toward temporally complex collaboration in an interorganizational research network

Prior research suggests interorganizational collaboration faces temporal challenges but also opportunities yet is scarce on the role of time enabling collaboration for collective benefit. Our contribution is highlighting how such collaboration in a large industry-academic network requires multiple collaborative repertoires with varying temporal rules and relationships. The temporal complexity of rules and relationships is evident in the network not becoming constrained, or saturated, by a single collaborative repertoire – even when imposed by the funder, when following a familiar agile method, formed communities of practice, or required by business interests. Rather, to produce network benefits in cross-industry innovation, the network developed and maintained its repertoires that coexisted and overlapped. We contribute to the intersection of the literatures on interorganizational networks and temporality, narrating how temporal elements of the collaboration allow sufficient complexity in participant responses and how participants thus can benefit from the network’s temporal diversities and asynchronies to achieve the network’s ambitions.