Innovation contests are increasingly used by businesses as an instrument for open innovation to address sustainability related questions. However, according to the open innovation literature, one of the main pitfalls of this approach can be the mismatch between the solutions proposed by non-experts and the companies’ capabilities to implement such solutions. We introduce the concept of collaborative innovation contests – where companies actively collaborate with non-experts – as a way to address this mismatch. Through participant observations, we analyse the process of a sustainability-oriented collaborative innovation contest guided by design-thinking. Our results indicated that the combination of an open innovation contest and design thinking could, through the creation of constant feedback loops, lead to increased collaboration between the contests participants, the companies proposing a challenge, and other relevant stakeholders. However, our results also highlighted trade-offs between the innovativeness of ideas, the alignment of solutions with firm capabilities and the resources needed for collaborative innovation contests. We conclude that, through the involvement of different stakeholders, their ideas and perspectives, collaborative innovation contests are a useful approach to generate a comprehensive understanding of the sustainability challenges companies face.@en

Hybrid organisations face competing demands, such as the need for financial viability versus the solving of environmental or social problems. Paradox theory is increasingly used to explore how organisations striving for sustainability manage these tensions. Via action research and an abductive approach in the setting of a Dutch housing association, we analyse how managers take decisions when faced with sustainability paradoxes in the process of strategy change. With this paper, we offer two main contributions. Firstly, we identify the types of paradoxes emerging while designing and implementing a new sustainable strategy. Secondly, we propose a theory on the freezing effects of sustainability paradoxes on the decision making process. We conclude that, although the understanding of sustainability paradoxes can activate strategic change, they can also feed inertia while freezing decision making due to the conflicting identities characterising hybrid organisations.@en