Research on collaborative innovation has been flourishing over the past two decades. Although a growing number of process studies have been published that demonstrate the intricate interplay between innovation and collaboration processes, we still lack important insight into the underlying mechanisms that explain the direction and progress in collaborative innovation processes. The fundamental challenge that actors must address is to engage in collective action despite significant uncertainty being associated with innovation which prevents actors from specifying precise resource needs and selecting partners in a linear fashion. We address this challenge through a qualitative meta-analysis of published in-depth processual case studies. Our abductive analysis explains how switching between three fundamental mechanisms—nucleating, situated engagement, and bidirectional configuring—enabled reaching and strengthening prospective alignment over time. These three mechanisms enable explaining the difference between ampliative and interrupted sequences in the cases we analyzed and help unpacking how multiple actors transformed their resources into joint value.