When practicing innovation, attracting different intellectual capabilities (ICAs) is extremely important. The reasoning is that innovation necessitates different ICA that can think differently together. Continuous pressure on finding, attracting and applying “the right intellectual capability” related to the task is interesting. This article aims to examine how to attract and apply ICA to innovate network‐level business models in three case studies.
The approach is action based qualitative research where three cases construct the empirical background of a cross‐disciplinary approach.
In order to attract different ICA the innovation leader needs to have an “outside in” approach as opposed to an “inside out”. The findings show that there is a potential to develop a unique intellectual capital – difficult to copy and compete – when companies understand the innovation projects value proposition, and align it to the value proposition of the ICA needed in each specific case.
The ability to understand and integrate other partner's value proposition is significant for the attractiveness of an innovation project and vital for attracting ICA, and can greatly improve the results.
It is extremely complicated to identify the different values of ICA. Furthermore their values are dynamic according to the relationships built during the innovation process. This calls for new methods to encompass values of innovation projects, ICAs and new tools for innovation leaders to apply.
