Increasingly, innovative collaboration between industry and schools is
being exploited as a way of improving the quality and relevance of
education. Even though these innovations appear to have substantial
benefits, often the impact proves to fade away after their
implementation. A better understanding of how to sustain complex
innovations seems important. Unfortunately, only a limited amount of
research investigates the ‘inside’ of complex innovations. This article
reports on a three-year, large-scale industry–school programme in the
Dutch Leisure sector. The research, from start to finish, adopted a
qualitative case study methodology with a mixed-methods approach,
drawing upon social capital theory as lens to understand the dynamics of
processes and effect on outcomes. Findings indicate that the social
capital theory helps to unravel crucial factors of processes and
outcomes. The researched innovation process depended not so much on
formal project plans and objectives but largely built on the quality of
social relationships at all levels. Sustaining this social capital
proved crucial, while managing according to a planned change strategy
appeared to be counterproductive. The outcomes show to be twofold, in
terms of new knowledge and products for the organisations and of
sustainable benefits for the professionals, in terms of new abilities.