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As a company that has continuously achieved business innovation, Apple in the United States has successfully applied strategic knowledge creation to produce a series of products that integrate various digital devices as well as diverse contents and applications, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, based on a corporate vision of a digital hub concept. At the same time, the redefining of corporate boundaries that expanded Apple’s business in a horizontal direction from the Macintosh PC business to the delivery of music, smartphones, and tablets is also an indication of the evolution of a corporate vision involving Apple’s strategic transformation. This chapter presents the strategic and creative processes that enabled practitioners, including the late Steve Jobs, to demonstrate “strategic innovation capability” by “holistic leadership” at every level of management at Apple and successfully achieve a business ecosystem strategy through “creative collaboration” across diverse boundaries within and outside the company.

Extant literature tends to consider knowledge boundaries as a necessary property of interdisciplinary work. Knowledge boundaries are, thus, reified and treated as something to be traversed, transcended or otherwise negotiated. There is, however, very little work that closely examines the process of emergence of boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to critically consider the emergence, stabilization and dissolution of knowledge boundaries among experts during the design stage of a building project to understand whether knowledge boundaries are as delineated and predictable as the literature makes them out to be.

A process-based, ethnographic study of a construction project is used. Building on a large data set collected over 13 months of research, this paper closely examines collaborative work around one specific issue during design development work that tripped up collaboration of the multidisciplinary and inter-organizational design team.

Knowledge boundaries do not exist based on differences of substance among groups (e.g. being an engineer vs being an architect) but rather that they are a function of divergent constellations of interests, work tools and practical concerns. While holding binding powers, they evolve in the face of alignments and misalignments, agreements and conflicts. As interests shift, concerns unfold and tools are dropped or used; boundaries emerge or dissolve.

A processual view of knowledge boundaries is advanced by demonstrating how they evolve in face of convergent (or divergent) work tools, practical concerns and interests. Existing research tends to equate knowledge boundaries with occupational/professional differences directly, but this paper demonstrates that work across expertise domains does not generate boundaries by itself. Resulting theoretical contributions are twofold: first, the current understanding of knowledge boundaries is refined by explaining how and why they emerge and dissolve across and within specialist knowledge domains, and second, the role of power and politics in this process is empirically foregrounded, highlighting how constellations of interests can lead to dynamic alliances or divisions.

This research examines how knowledge and information are managed within two care networks. We develop a conceptual framework drawing on the notion of brokering and the 3T framework, which is used to describe the relative complexity of boundaries (referred to in the framework as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) as well as capabilities and processes required to exchange information within the network. Previous research on brokering has focused on healthcare managers and professionals, but this research extends to patients and caregivers. Understanding knowledge exchange and brokering practices in healthcare is critical to the delivery of effective services.

For this case research, non-participant observation and experienced-based interviews were undertaken with healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers within two care networks.

The findings reveal brokering roles occupied by healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers support the transfer, translation and transformation of knowledge and information across functional and organisational boundaries. Enablers and disablers to brokering and the exchange of knowledge and information are also identified.

The study is limited to two care networks for long-term conditions within the UK. Further research opportunities exist to examine similar care networks that extend across professional and organisational boundaries.

This research informs healthcare professionals of the brokering capabilities that occur within networks and the enabling and disabling factors to managing knowledge across boundaries.

This paper provides a conceptual framework that categorises how increased levels of knowledge and information exchange and brokering practices are managed within care networks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine innovative practices and emphasize the mechanism of knowledge transfer across knowledge boundaries. By comparing and discussing the emerging boundary issues in knowledge transfer among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) registered in the incubation centers in China, this paper identified the main knowledge transfer approach and several contextual and organizational factors impacting knowledge transfer.

The authors conduct 39 semi-structured in-depth interviews with employees working within business incubation centers in China. The study uses thematic analysis for data analysis.

Our results contribute to the literature of knowledge transfer and in particular to our understanding of boundary conditions and knowledge transfer approaches in emerging economies. The results also highlight several contextual and organizational factors which impact knowledge transformation across the pragmatic boundary in the context of China.

First, organizations need to establish an effective process with tools to accommodate novelty; second, organizations should be aware of the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on innovative performance; and third, it will help organizations if they adopt and integrate information-rich media in managing innovative practices.

This research highlights the impact of contextual and organizational factors of SMEs on knowledge transfer in emerging markets and chooses incubation centers as study subjects, which is an organizational context that has not been thoroughly studied due to its unique nature and emerging complexity.

This paper aims to contribute to defining the concepts of boundary spanner, gatekeeper and knowledge broker.

A review of the literature covering more than 100 sources.

A review of past research leads to proposing a set of new definitions and also to the detection of six research avenues.

The ability of organizations to recognize, source and integrate key information or knowledge is important for their strategy, innovation and performance over time. Three types of individuals have information gathering and knowledge dissemination roles at the frontier of organizations and groups: boundary spanners, gatekeepers and knowledge brokers. Although research on these individuals is well-developed, we found that in practice, the definitions of the concepts overlap and still need a clarification. So far, no systematic comparison of these roles has been undertaken.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the crossing of knowledge and power boundaries within a bureaucratic organization by using enterprise social media (ESM). (Carlile’s 2002) boundary crossing framework is used to guide this research.

This is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and observations in a large Norwegian public sector organization.

The authors find that investigating crossing knowledge and power boundaries by using ESM is problematic at syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. ESM is used predominantly for sharing, storing and retrieving explicit knowledge, which is a display of crossing the information-processing boundary. Hence, the possibilities of shifts in formal power positions where all employees can participate on equal terms is not achieved. On the contrary, as shared meaning on how to use EMS, taking the perspective of other on how to share knowledge and thus creating new knowledge practices in EMS by overcoming these knowledge barriers is not evident. Therefore, examples of crossing the semantic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries are rarely found.

The framework could be applied to a variety of contexts to further explore the role of ESM in learning and knowledge sharing and its ability to cross power and knowledge boundaries.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature around discussions of power, trust, boundary crossing and the use of ESM for knowledge sharing and learning.

As teams are built around specialized and different knowledge, they need to regulate their knowledge boundaries to exchange their specialized knowledge with other teams and to protect the value of such specialized knowledge. However, prior studies focus primarily on boundary spanning and imply that boundaries are obstacles to sharing knowledge. To fill this research gap, this study aims to indicate the importance of knowledge protection regulation, an activity that sets an adequate boundary for protecting knowledge, and investigate the factors that facilitate knowledge protection regulation and its consequences.

This study collected empirical data from 196 teams in seven organizations. Through a validation of the measurement model, data from 138 teams are used for further analysis. The hypotheses effects are assessed using a structural equation model.

The analysis results indicate that both task uncertainty and task interdependency enhance knowledge protection regulation in teams, and that information technology support moderates the relationship between task uncertainty and knowledge protection regulation. The results also indicate that knowledge protection regulation improves inter-team coordination and team performance.

This study focuses on knowledge protection regulation by adopting communication privacy management theory at the team level. The findings imply that boundary management is the process of communication and depends on the role the teams play in accomplishing their tasks. The findings also provide a new way to understand knowledge flow of the teams as well as the entire organization.

The purpose of this study is to provide more insight in the ways key users act as knowledge managers and boundary spanners during the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system usage phase. Despite the recognized importance of key users during the implementation phase of an ERP system, little is known about their role in the ERP usage phase.

To provide rich insight in the boundary-spanning mechanisms utilized by key users to share knowledge, a qualitative approach was applied. In this study, “abductive” theme coding for 58 interviews with key users, end-users and managers has been used. This paper found six mechanisms and characterized them as “crossing” structural, social or cognitive boundaries.

Six boundary-spanning mechanisms have been distinguished which have been applied by key users to overcome several knowledge management issues. Subsequently, these mechanisms lead to a model which describes three different roles that key users may fulfill to efficiently share and transfer knowledge during the ERP usage phase.

Knowledge barriers during an ERP implementation and their accompanying six boundary-crossing mechanisms have been distinguished.

The recognition of the essential role that key users can fulfill during the usage phase of an ERP system is an important implication. Management has to take into account that tasks and responsibilities of key users have to be clear from the start and they may cautiously select employees who are suited to become key users.

The main contribution is the importance of the impact of key users on the effectivity of knowledge management during the ERP usage phase.

In an interconnected world, projects span boundaries bringing together multiple organizations that enable cross‐boundary teams to contribute their collective knowledge assets. Herein lies the theoretical and managerial challenge; to date no‐one has identified the “knowledge boundaries” of projects. This means knowledge resources may be duplicated or ineffectively managed, impacting on project and organizational success. This paper seeks to demonstrate how “knowledge boundaries” can be identified and to illustrate how knowledge can be more effectively and efficiently used by cross‐boundary projects.

The research question: “How can the knowledge boundaries of networked projects be identified?” was addressed through a set of case studies spanning the Ministry of Defence (MOD)/Defence‐Industry boundary. Individual and shared knowledge assets, and the interrelationships between them, were identified via parallel coding of interview data and the analysis of the survey results. The knowledge boundary of the networked project was therefore determined and its interconnections and managerial implications unraveled.

Knowledge boundaries, as opposed to project or organizational boundaries, define the self‐sustaining knowledge core required by a project to access and use all the complementary and interconnecting knowledge it needs. Project knowledge is a linked, interdependent typology that spans boundaries; it must either be managed across boundaries, or all the organizations involved must invest over the odds to maintain it. Project team members need differently shaped knowledge but with enough overlap to communicate effectively thus linking knowledge together.

The paper introduces the “knowledge boundary” concept to define the self‐sustaining knowledge core a project requires to access, and use, all the knowledge it needs. Projects that understand their knowledge boundaries can use knowledge far more efficiently and effectively than those that do not.

Effective project learning can prevent projects from repeating the same mistakes; however, knowledge codification is required for project-to-project learning to be up-scaled across the temporal, geographical and organisational barriers that constrain personalised learning. This paper explores the state of practice for the structuring of codified project learnings as concrete boundary objects with the capacity to enable externalised project-to-project learning across complex boundaries. Cross-domain reconceptualisation is proposed to enable further research and support the future development of standardised recommendations for boundary objects that can enable project-to-project learning at scale.

An integrative literature review method has been applied, considering knowledge, project learning and boundary object scholarship as state-of-practice sources.

It is found that the extensive body of boundary object literature developed over the last three decades has not yet examined the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning and boundary-spanning capacity. Through a synthesis of the dispersed structural characteristic recommendations that have been made across examined domains, a reconceptualised schema of 30 discrete characteristics associated with boundary-spanning capacity for project-to-project learning is proposed to support further investigation.

This review makes a novel contribution as a first cross-domain examination of the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning. The authors provide directions for future research through the reconceptualisation of a novel schema and the identification of important and previously unidentified research gaps.