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Collaborative innovation is increasingly put forward as a way of addressing the many wicked problems our society faces today. This article focuses on how politicians indirectly affect projects of collaborative innovation and whether stakeholders experience them as helpful or hindering to the project. The impact of politicians on projects of collaborative innovation are compared across four cases and throughout three project phases (set-up, implementation and sustainment). The results show six ways in which politicians can help projects of collaborative innovation: by providing funding, by making a project a political priority, by connecting stakeholders, by resolving stakeholder conflicts, by unblocking red tape barriers and by extending a collaborative network legitimacy. Furthermore, stakeholders perceived politicians as potentially hindering collaborative innovation projects in three ways: through the adjustment of the project goals, through the loss of a project’s ‘neutral’ status and through blocking or obstructing a project.Points for practitionersOne important point to take away for practitioners is that there appears to be a strong focus among stakeholders on the potentially hindering effects of politicians on collaborative innovation projects (CIPs). Yet, across the four cases, the positive impact of political support played a bigger role. While some of these findings can be case specific, it shows that public servants may benefit from being more open-minded about the potentially positive impact of politicians on CIPs.