Bridging conflicting innovation spheres of tourism innovation: The role of diplomacy

In service sectors such as tourism production and consumption are tied to places. In these places different actors base their production on a set of shared resources. Such localized systems can be characterized by different service practices, disagreements among actors, lack of trust, and competition which may inhibit networked and open innovation. Tourist destinations are examples of such localized systems. In this paper we present two extreme cases of tourist destinations in which collaborative innovation processes were established in spite of fierce disagreements between actors. We argue that in tourist destinations actors belong to conflicting innovation spheres but can be brought together in innovation processes when a diplomat enable compromises and when innovation spheres change from personalized to more generalized forms of activity during interaction. The findings are relevant not only for tourism but also for other sectors characterized by localized systems.