From brokerage to orchestration: Physical open innovation intermediaries as platforms for system-level knowledge creation

System-level innovation problems increasingly require firms to integrate heterogeneous and distant knowledge domains, yet existing open innovation research offers limited insight into how such knowledge creation processes are shaped and orchestrated. This study examines how physical knowledge contributors (PKCs), a distinct type of open innovation intermediary, support organizations in addressing system-level innovation problems. Integrating absorptive capacity and platform research, we conduct an in-depth exploratory case study of BlueThink, a PKC that support innovation seekers by leveraging internal competencies, physical laboratory infrastructures, and a curated network of solvers. Our findings show that knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation - the constitutive dimensions of absorptive capacity - unfold through an iterative, cyclical process involving the PKC, the seeker, and multiple solvers, rather than through a linear, firm-bounded sequence. PKCs actively participate in knowledge creation by providing a cultural and physical inter-medium that enables learning-by-doing, supports agile experimentation, and facilitates the recombination of partial solutions into system-level configurations. We propose an interpretive model in which PKCs operate as orchestrative two-sided platforms that extend and, in some phases, temporarily substitute for the seeker’s absorptive capacity. By contrasting PKCs with the more widely studied virtual knowledge brokers or digital intermediaries, this study advances our understanding of how physical intermediaries contribute to knowledge creation in complex innovation processes.