Infomediaries and collaborative innovation: A case study on information and technology centered intermediation in the Dutch employment and social security sector

Abstract

In this article we have explored the significance of specific intermediary organizations for collaborative innovation in the Dutch Employment and Social Security sector: 'infomediaries'. Infomediaries have been established to promote and support collaboration between other organizations through informational and technology centered intermediary services. However, how they actually do so in practice is not yet well understood. The aim of this article is threefold. First, it offers a conceptual underpinning for infomediaries and their activities. Second, the article offers an empirically informed insight in the actual ways in which infomediaries facilitate and promote collaborative innovation. Finally, we connect the empirical phenomenon of the infomediary organization to the wider debate on the role of intermediary organizations in innovation. Despite the fact that infomediary activities are constrained by a resilient institutional dynamic not malleable to burgeoning inter-organizational collaboration, we argue that they help promote collaborative innovation through the provision of services aimed at aligning the 'business', 'informational' and 'technology' domains of several collaborating organizations on a strategic, structural or operational level. Our research suggests that infomediaries are relevant to collaborate innovation by bringing about alignment in specific ways. They act as symbolic analysts in the conceptualization of new collaborative arrangements between parties; as discursive instigators in the development and framing of a collaborative discourse; and finally as bricoleurs providing parties with practical, makeshift tools and coproducing instruments. © 2009-IOS Press and the authors.