Reorchestration in Sustainability‐Oriented Collaborative Innovation

ABSTRACT Engaging in innovation to address sustainability challenges often requires collaboration, yet bringing together diverse and interdependent actors to define a collective direction and action is no easy task. This challenge is amplified in collaborative innovation settings where orchestration is ambiguous and distributed, and the innovation itself is not predefined. Such settings raise important questions about how actors reconfigure established business systems when engaging in sustainability‐oriented collaborative innovation, a process this article conceptualizes as reorchestration. Drawing on three in‐depth case studies of early‐stage urban logistics pilot initiatives, this article examines the reorchestration process as actors engage in sustainability‐oriented collaborative innovation. The findings identify three key considerations that characterize these reorchestration processes: (1) forming goals, which defines what actors are reorchestrating toward as actors navigate between individual and collective ambitions; (2) exploring values, which clarifies why reorchestration is worth pursuing, as business‐oriented and sustainability‐oriented priorities are navigated; and (3) realizing change, which concerns how reorchestration is sustained as collaboration develops through the interplay of emergence and alignment. In doing so, the study advances the emerging literature on reorchestration by providing further understanding of how actors collectively reorchestrate established business systems when engaging in sustainability‐oriented collaborative innovation.