“At the heart of effective collaboration is value creation. It is what motivates, sustains, and produces impact from cross-sector partnering. In it lies the answer to the fundamental question posed by this Special JBE Issue: How is society better off due to the joining of efforts of organizations across sectors? The basic theoretical premise, which has been confirmed in practice, is that at the meso level of inter-sectoral alliances new value can be created by combining each organization’s distinctive resources and capabilities. Together they can do more and do it more effectively than separately. This is particularly important to society because the growing magnitude and complexity of a multitude of societal problems transcend the capacity of individual organizations to solve them. Therefore, it is vital that academics and practitioners deepen the understanding of the collaborative value creation process.”