Abstract
This study examined how expansive learning is facilitated in cross-boundary communities from the perspective of maintaining polyphony. As a means to encourage knowledge and value creation, business-to-business and industry-academia collaborations have recently gained prominence. However, the mere formation or connection of communities between organisations or individuals may facilitate knowledge sharing but does not guarantee the creation of new values. To understand how change and innovation occur, we need to examine how people and organisations construct reality in the social context of communities of practice, mediated by language, representation, and institutions, from a co-configuration (Engeström, 2008). Hence, we consider how polyphonic learning relations can be sustained in cross-boundary projects in Japan. Our results show that the maintenance of polyphony is primarily influenced by the different formative intervention approaches of multiple interveners, as actors with diverse interests are intertwined at boundary crossings.