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Our paper is centred on exploring the experiences of opening up closed doors to strangers in the context of home exchange.

This paper is based on a year-long research project which has drawn on multiple qualitative methods of data collection. A bricolage approach was adopted to enable the authors to gather data which is sensitive to multivocality and conscious of difference within the consumer experience.

Our findings demonstrate that home exchangers treat their home as an asset to be capitalised, to allow them to travel to places and communities otherwise unreachable. Home exchangers simultaneously engage in the symbolic creation of home in a temporary environment and utilise the kinship and community networks of their home exchange partner.

Our paper adds depth and an insight to the increasing media coverage of the home exchange phenomenon.

As a consumption practice that is witnessing widespread appeal, home exchange uncovers evidence of trust amongst strangers. While it is common practice to open the home in order to build friendship, it is less common for this invitation to be extended to strangers.

We extend the extensive theorisation of the home as a symbolic environment and reveal that the home can also be used in an enterprising fashion.

Project ventures are an increasingly prevalent organizational form in many industries. The management literature has stressed their flexibility and adaptability advantages. This chapter focuses on the learning implications of the source of flexibility most essential to project ventures: the ability to switch partners during project formation and execution. This partnering flexibility creates opportunities to respond to new knowledge about characteristics of project tasks and project partners. Partnering flexibility, however, also creates learning challenges. The short-term nature of relationships between project partners and the disintegration of the project team after project completion challenges the accumulation and transfer of knowledge to future projects. Beyond the introduction of related learning opportunities and challenges, we identify potential contingency factors in the project context that shape when partner flexibility will have beneficial versus harmful effects. On the organizational level, we propose that project-governing permanent organizations can support project-venture learning. On the industry level, we highlight potential learning benefits of standardized partner roles and coordination practices. Thus, our chapter introduces a multilevel contingency framework for the evaluation of both learning opportunities and challenges of partnering flexibility in project-venture settings. We formulate testable propositions focused on partner-project fit and project performance.