Life-worlds of corporate venturing: a multiple case study on interorganisational knowledge transfer across socio-cultural barriers

Since most innovations occur at the boundaries of cultural systems, the transfer of knowledge across these boundaries is of paramount interest to knowledge management. We investigate how socio‐cultural barriers to knowledge transfer emerge from the divergent life‐worlds of new ventures and parent corporations and what enables interorganisational knowledge transfer across these barriers. The paper is anchored in the micro‐interactionist tradition in organisational learning and addresses the constructivist discourse in social studies of knowledge. The empirical part is based on an exploratory multi‐case study on 12 corporate venture capital (CVC) dyads in two different industries in Germany. The results highlight the 'clash of cultures' between parent corporations and new ventures and suggest drawing more attention to the integration of different modes of learning and types of knowledge by boundary‐spanning across divergent life‐worlds. The CVC units of parent corporations play a crucial role in interorganisational learning both as translator and as broker of knowledge.