<p>Drawing from a wide body of scholarship, this paper provides a systematic review of how institutional entrepreneurs address the cooperation dilemmas surrounding innovation. Integrating rich empirical evidence into the equilibrium-of-the-game paradigm, we examine the strategies they employ to mitigate two central problems: coordination and opportunism. To address coordination problems, often modeled with assurance games, institutional entrepreneurs mobilize resources, establish infrastructure, and shape participants’ future expectations and normative beliefs. To counter opportunism, typically modeled with prisoners’ dilemma games, they internalize norms, develop third-party enforcement mechanisms, and reshape governance structures. By synthesizing and categorizing these strategies across firms, communities, industries, and knowledge regimes, this paper clarifies how bottom-up institutional mechanisms sustain innovation. It also highlights polycentric knowledge governance driven by institutional entrepreneurs who possess inherent adaptability, creativity, and reflexivity, enabling them to devise solutions to collective action problems.</p>