Innovations as a solution for sustainability and development challenges are increasingly attracting the attention of academia and practitioners, and collaboration between different actors is seen as a requirement for successful innovation development. In this article, we study innovation intermediaries in resource-constrained environments through a case study of the Kenyan water sector. To understand how intermediaries operate in these environments, we developed an analytical framework to identify the key functions offered by intermediaries at different stages of the innovation process. We identified three intermediary dimensions, recognising that most of the studied intermediaries provide support for the commercialisation of innovations, while far fewer focus on the earlier stages of the process, which hinders the systematic tackling of constraints. However, due to the intermediaries’ past involvement with institutional development, capacity building and overall regional development, they can efficiently mitigate the prevailing constraints and institutional voids. Further, we found that the intermediaries function as hybrid organisations as they adopt new roles and combine different operational logics to support innovators in addition to their more traditional roles in the development sector. Innovation intermediaries thus play a significant role in enabling innovation and sustainable development in resource-constrained environments.

创新作为可持续发展和发展挑战的解决方案越来越受到学术界和实践者的关注，不同参与者之间的合作被视为成功创新发展的必要条件。在本文中，我们通过肯尼亚水务部门的案例研究来研究资源有限环境中的创新中介机构。为了了解中介机构如何在这些环境中运作，我们开发了一个分析框架，以确定中介机构在创新过程的不同阶段提供的关键功能。我们确定了三个中介维度，认识到大多数研究的中介机构为创新的商业化提供支持，而很少关注该过程的早期阶段，这阻碍了系统性解决约束因素。然而，由于中介机构过去参与了制度发展、能力建设和整体区域发展，它们可以有效地缓解普遍存在的限制和制度空白。此外，我们发现中介机构发挥着混合组织的作用，因为除了在发展领域的传统角色之外，它们还采用新的角色并结合不同的运营逻辑来支持创新者。因此，创新中介机构在资源有限的环境中实现创新和可持续发展方面发挥着重要作用。