Within the Swedish shipping industry, a collaborative initiative for increased energy efficiency is being established; Sweship Energy. It aims to overcome an energy efficiency gap by enabling knowledge sharing between both different actors and different communities of practice. Within the initiative, different activities are being executed; including a network for energy managers, education focusing on onboard personnel, and a database project. Through a PhD project, we study the organization of the initiative, aiming for a better understanding of inter-organizational collaborations for transition towards sustainable development. In the project, we have a qualitative approach. We use empirically grounded, ethnographic methods. The data is collected through observations, interviews and documents. In this paper, we explore the database project’s role within the initiative during the earliest establishment phase of the initiative. It was the first project that was initiated when the collaboration was first established. For decades, objects have been included in research aiming to explain collaborations, and have with time gained an increasingly central role in the literature. Much of recent literature apply the concept of boundary objects. Boundary objects could be described as objects which form boundaries between different communities of practice in shared spaces. In the literature, databases are examples of boundary objects previously studied. In Sweship Energy’s database project, the actors involved translated the database project differently; as a project developing a database for decision support for companies, a pedagogic tool at the initiative’s workshops, a tool mapping the industry’s total energy saving efforts, or a tool for central support from the initiative’s secretariat to its members. These translations also changed throughout the project. Despite the lack of a common understanding of what the database meant, all actors involved agreed on a database to be developed. During the database project, several challenges were experienced, and the project’s outcome did not meet all expectations. Whether the database project was a failure or a success could be discussed, and depends on what definition of failures being applied. Based on a market definition, a technically functioning database was not created, even though parts of the project’s outcome are still being used in other forms. From a social context, several key actors considered the project to be a failure. However, if the aim of the database project was not to create a technical object but rather to contribute to the establishment of a collaboration, then it could be argued that it might have been at least partly a success; as a project, the database project resulted in additional actors becoming involved in Sweship Energy.
