Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries

The paper examines managing knowledge across boundaries in settings where innovation is desired. Innovation is a useful context because it allows us to explore the negative consequences of the path-dependent nature of knowledge. A framework is developed that describes three progressively complex boundaries—syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic—and three progressively complex processes—transfer, translation, and transformation. The framework is used...