From Ideas to Impact: Why France and Germany Need More Boundary Spanners

Connecting people, organizations and ecosystems

Companies have never had so many opportunities to innovate. They invest in technology, work with start-ups, build partnerships and participate in increasingly complex ecosystems.

And yet, many promising initiatives struggle to move from concept to decision, and from decision to action.

The problem is not necessarily the quality of the idea. Increasingly, it is the ability to collaborate across boundaries.

A research team may understand a technology but not the customer's priorities. A sales team may identify a market opportunity but lack access to the right technical expertise. A large company may want to work with a start-up but struggle to adapt its processes to a very different organization.

The same applies internationally. A French company may identify a promising German partner but find it difficult to establish the relationship and navigate the ecosystem.

In all these situations, something is often missing: a bridge between worlds.

This is where the concept of boundary spanners, or bridgers, becomes particularly relevant.

Innovation increasingly happens across boundaries

Innovation is no longer simply an internal process. It increasingly emerges from interactions between different functions, organizations, sectors and ecosystems. The boundaries involved may be functional, organizational, professional, technological, cultural or geographical.

A boundary is not necessarily a problem. It becomes one when the people on either side struggle to understand each other, build trust, align their interests or coordinate their actions.

This is why good ideas can become stalled projects. The challenge is not always to find another idea. It is often to make different people work together around an idea.

From communication to co-creation

In their work on scaling innovation, Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Jason Wild, authors of Genius at Scale, highlight the importance of leaders who can bridge differences and enable people to collaborate across boundaries.

The role of the bridger goes well beyond simply transmitting information.

Communication might mean telling one team what another team wants. Bridging means helping both sides understand each other's perspectives, build trust and create something together.

The process can be seen as a progression:

Information → Understanding → Trust → Alignment → Co-creation → Action

This is what makes boundary spanners particularly valuable in complex innovation projects.

They can translate between different professional languages, connect people who would not otherwise meet and help stakeholders identify common interests where they initially see only different priorities.

Their real contribution is therefore not simply to make information circulate.

It is to make collective action possible.

Connector, translator, integrator

The role can be understood through three complementary functions.

First, the connector identifies the people, capabilities or organizations that need to be brought together.

Then comes the translator, who makes different perspectives understandable to one another. Engineers, sales teams, researchers, investors or policymakers may all approach the same project from very different perspectives.

Finally, the integrator helps turn these different contributions into a common project, aligning expectations and maintaining momentum when interests diverge.

In other words:

• A connector creates the link.
• A translator creates understanding.
• An integrator creates collective action.

The strongest boundary spanners are often able to perform all three roles.

Why these profiles are difficult to find

Companies increasingly look for people who can "work across functions" or "manage stakeholders". But genuine boundary-spanning capabilities are difficult to capture in a job description.

They are usually developed through experience.

A good boundary spanner has often worked across several functions or organizations, managed complex partnerships, experienced different cultures and learned to operate without necessarily having direct hierarchical authority.

Their value is therefore not only what they know. It is also their ability to connect what they know with what others know.

This is why such profiles are often developed over time rather than simply recruited off the shelf.

And there is another essential ingredient: trust.

In complex collaborations, obstacles are rarely purely technical. Differences in priorities, commercial interests, decision-making processes or organizational cultures can quickly create friction.

A boundary spanner helps create the conditions in which trust can develop. They understand the concerns of different parties while remaining sufficiently independent to help them find common ground.

When the boundary becomes international

The challenge becomes even more interesting when the boundary is not only organizational, but also international.

Consider a French company looking for an industrial partner in Germany. Identifying companies active in the same sector is relatively straightforward.

The real questions are more complex: Who are the relevant players? Who influences the decision? Which organizations could become genuine partners? How should the relationship be initiated? How can trust be established and differences in business practices managed?

A database can provide names. A market study can provide information.

But neither necessarily creates a relationship.

This is where a France–Germany boundary spanner can play a distinctive role: connecting ecosystems, translating expectations and helping turn a potential relationship into an operational collaboration.

The objective is not simply to "bridge two countries". It is to connect specific people, organizations, capabilities and opportunities across two ecosystems.

The external boundary spanner

This raises an important question: does a boundary spanner always need to be an employee?

Not necessarily.

Some situations require a permanent internal role. Others call for an experienced external profile for a specific project or period: entering a new market, developing a strategic partnership, connecting with an innovation ecosystem or accelerating international business development.

The external boundary spanner is neither a traditional consultant delivering a report nor simply a commercial intermediary providing contacts.

Their role is more operational:

Understand → Connect → Translate → Facilitate → Align → Activate

The objective is to help the relevant actors actually work together and move forward.

Because a potential partner is not yet a partnership. An introduction is not yet collaboration. And a promising idea is not yet innovation.

There is a progression:

Potential → Connection → Trust → Collaboration → Execution

Boundary spanners operate precisely in this space.

From potential to action

As innovation becomes increasingly collaborative, the ability to work across boundaries becomes as important as expertise within boundaries.

Technology matters. Strategy matters. Resources matter.

But so does the ability to connect expertise, cultures, organizations and ecosystems that would otherwise remain fragmented.

This is why boundary spanners, bridgers and facilitators are becoming strategic assets.

They do not replace leaders, experts or partners. They help these different actors work together.

For France and Germany, this capability can be particularly valuable. Two highly developed industrial ecosystems, close in many respects but different enough to create friction, offer significant opportunities for collaboration.

The challenge is to turn that potential into actual connections—and those connections into action.

**The boundary spanner is not simply the person who stands between two worlds.

They are the person who helps those two worlds build something together.**