Psychological ownership for overcoming departmental barriers to innovation: A Study of innovation handoffs

Effective collaboration across departments in an organization is critical to innovation success. Our purpose was to investigate factors contributing to successful innovation involving multiple organizational departments. We employed a multiple-case design with three Norwegian companies in three industries, by examining what happens at innovation project handoffs between different departments in an organization. We found that shared psychological ownership of innovation projects enabled efficient handoffs and helped manage the challenges of working across organizational boundaries. Our analysis identified a variety of enablers, which were consistent across industries, to improve innovation project handoffs and create shared psychological ownership.