Why Some Collaborations Stall While Others Gain Momentum
Research by Attabik Awan shows how uncertainty, leadership, and the balance between convergence and divergence shape whether complex societal collaborations for innovation stall or gain momentum.
Everyone wants progress. Yet collaborations aimed at tackling major societal challenges often lose momentum. Meetings pile up, decisions are postponed, and the organizations involved can gradually lose sight of each other.
Why does this happen? More importantly, how can such patterns be broken?
These questions were at the heart of the work of , a PhD researcher in the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing (ITEM) group. Together with Bob Walrave (ITEM), Vincent de Gooyert (Radboud University), and Gunter Bombaerts (Philosophy and Ethics at 黑料福利网), he authored the paper Vicious and Virtuous Loops: Uncertainty, Leadership, and Convergence-Divergence in Collaborative Innovation. Awan received the Organization Studies & SAGE Student Paper Impact Award 2026 for this co-authored work. The prestigious award recognizes research with significant societal impact.
A Turning Point
The researchers examined how Dutch municipalities collaborate on the transition from natural gas to more sustainable heating alternatives. These efforts involve many different actors, including municipalities, housing associations, grid operators, and residents. While everyone shares the same overall goal, their interests, information, and priorities do not always align.
The study found that collaborations often evolve through self-reinforcing patterns. Attempts to reduce uncertainty by converging too quickly can backfire, creating 鈥渢unnel vision鈥� around a fixed solution, limiting stakeholder involvement, eroding trust, and ultimately increasing uncertainty over time.
Yet the opposite imbalance can be equally problematic. Too much divergence can create a 鈥渄ialogue of the deaf鈥�, in which diverse perspectives never coalesce into a viable, actionable, and collectively endorsed solution.
Collaborative innovation therefore requires complementary leadership approaches that continually recalibrate between divergence, to increase the solution space, and convergence, to make progress towards concrete outcomes.
These insights were translated into a policy report and a 鈥渓iving鈥� framework that now guide regional cooperation and coordination in developing supra-local heat sources. They also informed the co-development and refinement of practical tools for assessing and evaluating collaborative innovation projects.
Human Dynamics
These findings closely align with IE&IS expertise in innovation, organizations, and decision-making. Within ITEM, researchers study how people and organizations work together to address societal challenges in situations where outcomes remain uncertain.
Awan鈥檚 research highlights that successful innovation is not only about new technologies or clever solutions. It is also about people, processes, and leadership: about building trust, managing different perspectives, and making decisions together when not all the answers are known.
Close to Home
That makes the research relevant to many of today鈥檚 most pressing challenges. Whether the issue is the energy transition, sustainable mobility, or the future of healthcare, meaningful change almost always depends on collaboration between multiple organizations.
By helping us better understand why collaborations sometimes stall and sometimes gain momentum, the research provides valuable insights for policymakers, public organizations, and businesses, collaboratively working on complex societal challenges.
The award received by Awan and his colleagues underscores the importance of those insights. Not because the answers are simple, but because they help people and organizations move forward together.