Stephen Comello

Boundary organizations aim to facilitate collective efforts, but their collaborative arrangements often fall short of initial expectations, face member exits, or experience escalating conflicts. How do diverse members of these boundary organizations stay together and pursue collective goals despite tensions with their individual goals? Drawing on the concept of agency, we explore how members respond to these tensions and reshape the boundary organization’s goals to better align with their own, while maintaining collaboration for the pursuit of collective goals. Based on an in-depth longitudinal case study of a boundary organization in the energy sector, we developed a process model that explains how and why agency evolves over time. It outlines different trajectories through which members achieve a balance between collective and member goals, offering insights into how boundary organizations can either sustain themselves or fail. Our findings emphasize that goal pursuit is a dynamic process, where members continuously shift their focus between collective and member goals to maintain a balance over time. The process model explicates the agentic mechanisms behind these shifts in focus, revealing a dynamic interplay between two forms of agency that differ in their temporal orientation and locus of agency. We extend prior research that has focused on the governance structures and organizing practices in boundary organizations, by offering insights into why these boundary organizations may prevail, as they continuously shift their agency to navigate resurfacing tensions. Funding: This work was supported by the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research–Competence Center for Research in Energy, Society and Transition (SCCER CREST) [Grant 1155000154]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16973 .

This study adopts a temporal perspective to investigate how boundary spanners can increase the inflow of external knowledge by engaging with both external and internal parties. We add to prior work on knowledge transfer by shifting the focus from engagement levels to investigating engagement dynamics, especially the degree of switching between external and internal engagement across consecutive time periods. Drawing from a cognitive perspective, we argue that switching strongly between engagement types is associated with a segmented knowledge structure that enables quick and efficient categorical processing when knowledge can simply be “channeled” from source to recipient units. In contrast, weak or no switching is associated with a blended knowledge structure and more reflective processing, which is particularly helpful when knowledge transfer requires more translation and transformation. Correspondingly, we adopt a contingency perspective and theorize that the cognitive advantages associated with stronger versus weaker switching weigh differently, contingent on the stickiness of knowledge to be transferred and the nature of boundary-spanning activities that vary in importance over time. Fixed effects models of eight waves of original survey data reveal that, in line with our theorizing, the association between switching and knowledge transfer becomes increasingly negative (1) the more boundary spanners access knowledge that is transspecialist in nature, (2) the greater the organizational distance between source and recipient units, and (3) in later phases of the boundary-spanning process. Funding: This work was supported by the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research–Competence Center for Research in Energy, Society and Transition (SCCER CREST) [Grant 1155000154]. The work was also financially supported by a seed grant from the Bits and Watts Initiative within the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1677 .

This study investigates how, why, and under which conditions incumbents and new entrants realign in innovation ecosystems to collectively tackle the grand challenge (GC) of climate change. The discussion on innovation and GCs is still lacking sufficient theoretical underpinnings and empirical insights to make sense of the role of for‐profit firms and their collaborative innovation efforts to address the GCs of our times. We introduce innovation ecosystems as a theoretical lens for understanding the combinations of technological interfaces and strategic relations that firms can employ to craft value propositions with high potential for tackling GCs. Empirically, this study focuses on the GC of climate change that requires a transformation of the electricity sector. We investigate collaborative pilot projects between 10 international electric utilities and 57 clean‐tech startups. In these pilots, incumbents and new entrants explore low‐carbon value propositions through novel technological interfaces and strategic relations. Via qualitative comparative analysis, we identify three configurations of ecosystem realignment with high climate impact: an incumbent‐led digital platform realignment, a device complementor and customer‐enabling realignment, and a new orchestrator realignment. Based on a multiple case analysis, we uncover three innovation mechanisms that explain why these specific configurations unlock climate impact: they enhance resource efficiency, the flexibility and resilience of infrastructure, and the trading and leveraging of information and resources. On this basis, we contribute to the literature at the intersection of innovation management and GCs by developing theory that explicates (1) how the realignment of incumbents and startups in innovation ecosystems changes existing industry structures; (2) why specific configurations of such ecosystems are associated with high climate impact and are thus effective in addressing GCs; and (3) the boundary conditions under which collective innovation efforts in ecosystems can translate into climate impact.

Reflected in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), global climate change is one of the grand challenges faced by humanity. While substantially more progress is required, technol...

Energy storage will be key to overcoming the intermittency and variability of renewable energy sources. Here, we propose a metric for the cost of energy storage and for identifying optimally sized storage systems. The levelized cost of energy storage is the minimum price per kWh that a potential investor requires in order to break even over the entire lifetime of the storage facility. We forecast the dynamics of this cost metric in the context of lithium-ion batteries and demonstrate its usefulness in identifying an optimally sized battery charged by an incumbent solar PV system. Applying the model to residential solar customers in Germany, we find that behind-the-meter storage is economically viable because of the large difference between retail rates and current feed-in tariffs. In contrast, investment incentives for battery systems in California derive principally from a state-level subsidy program.

The fabrication and manufacturing processes of industrial commodities such as iron, glass, and cement are carbon-intensive, accounting for 23% of global CO₂ emissions. As a climate mitigation strategy, CO₂ capture from flue gases of industrial processes—much like that of the power sector—has not experienced wide adoption given its high associated costs. However, some industrial processes with relatively high CO₂ flue concentration may be viable candidates to cost-competitively supply CO₂ for utilization purposes (e.g., polymer manufacturing, etc.). This work develops a methodology that determines the levelized cost ($/tCO₂) of separating, compressing, and transporting carbon dioxide. A top-down model determines the cost of separating and compressing CO₂ across 18 industrial processes. Further, the study calculates the cost of transporting CO₂ via pipeline and tanker truck to appropriately paired sinks using a bottom-up cost model and geo-referencing approach. The results show that truck transportation is generally the low-cost alternative given the relatively small volumes (ca. 100 kt CO₂/a). We apply our methodology to a regional case study in Pennsylvania, which shows steel and cement manufacturing paired to suitable sinks as having the lowest levelized cost of capture, compression, and transportation.