The paper motivates and presents an approach for assembling innovative information-based products and services by virtual cross-organization communities of practice. Using a case study on assembling vacation packages, we describe the cross-organizational virtual partnership, the mechanics allowing it to operate as a virtual community of practice and how collective intelligence of the members is appropriated to ensemble innovative information-based products for tourists. The results provide useful insights into innovating through virtual networking as well as the ICT tools that may be used to foster value-creating networks of practice in boundary spanning domains.

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Abstract. The paper presents a field study aimed at identifying and analyzing the role of boundary artifacts in cross-organization virtual communities of practice (CoP). Our analysis is informed by a recent case study in vacation package assembly (VPA), which is defined as the distributed collective practice carried out by members of a boundary-spanning virtual alliance inhabiting a 'common' information space (CIS). The CIS forms the virtuality through which members of the alliance engage in coordinative actions on boundary artifacts. The CIS implements the facilities required for constructing, negotiating and reconstructing these boundary artifacts so as to assemble personalized regional vacation packages for tourists. The results lead to several conclusions on the design of CIS as computational host of virtual communities of practice.

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