The European Union (EU) promotes collaboration across functions and borders in its funded innovation projects, which are seen as complex collaboration to co-create knowledge. This requires the engagement of multiple stakeholders throughout the duration of the project. To probe complexity in EU-funded innovation projects the research question is: How does complexity affect the co-creation of knowledge in innovation projects, according to project participants? The data for this study was collected from project experts in the form of short narratives, using a questionnaire based on the elements of complexity of Mitleton-Kelly (2003). The results indicate that complexity characterises the co-creation of knowledge in innovation projects in various ways. Most emphasis was put on the elements Self-organisation, Connectivity and interdependence, Co-evolution, and Creation of new order. Thus, although this study demonstrates that the elements of complexity can be used to gain insight into innovation projects, the results show that not all elements of complexity are equally important in this context and that they appearin a certain order. Moreover, understanding the complexity of collaboration for innovation in relation to the input-throughput-output model oforganisational communication is a contribution to theory that may help future projects achieve faster innovation. management challenges. Currently, limited research is being conducted into the online community using digital data analytics in non-business contexts. This explorative study further develops existing knowledge on civic tech communities and the use of digital data analytics. To this end, we review the previous research in order to understand how to aggregate literature on online communities, civic technologies and data analytics into a conceptual model that is useable by both academics and practitioners. The framework proposed serves as the first step in differentiating the building blocks of relevant digital data in managing civic technology communities and should be regarded as an effort to structure the available sources. Thus, the focus of the proposed conceptual model is not to offer prescriptive guidelines on the use of digital analytics, but rather to present a broader understanding of the emerging phenomenon and dimensions of data analysis.