Crowding at the frontier: boundary spanners, gatekeepers and knowledge brokers.

Our work contributes to defining the concepts of boundary spanner, gatekeeper and knowledge broker witth a review of the literature covering more than 100 sources. We find that review of past research allows to propose a set of new definitions and also to the detection of 5 research avenues.The ability of organizations to recognize, source and integrate key outside information or knowledge is important for their strategy, innovation and performance over time. Three types of individuals have information gathering and knowledge dissemination roles at the frontier of organizations: boundary spanners, gatekeepers and knowledge brokers. Although research on these individuals is well developed, we found that in practice the definitions of the concepts overlap and still need a clarification. So far, no systematic comparison of these roles has been undertaken