Joint action and knowledge sharing are fundamental aspects of business model innovation (BMI) for businesses to meet the complex BMI agenda of today; 12 independent businesses initially joint innovating on the establishment of a new concept of a balanced energy plant project, where the businesses had to work in symbioses from the very first moment and have now reached the second phase of the BMI project – the final and closing of the conceptualization phase. In the previous paper presented at the IFKAD conference 2015 the GreenLab Skive project (GLS) was still in the very initial and “happy days” of the BMI project. The second phase is now filled with the final contract negotiations, other network partners who wants to join the project from different business model ecosystems (BME). This now plays an important aspect that influences the BMI project in both positive and negative ways. Business model (BM) science and best practice tools have had little to say on the network aspect of BMI projects – particularly the BM relation axiom topic – which we call the quadrant 3 (Lindgren and Rasmussen, 2013). For many years’ perception, action, and cognition of network partners in a BMI project have been studied without investigating network partner’s BM´s real roles and interaction related to network-based business model innovation (NBBMI) intensively. However, the establishment of a “room” for social BMI interaction is essential both at the very first moment of the meeting between the involved participants – who often are different and unknown to each other. But as we show in this paper it is also needed in the later phases of the BMI process – the second phase in this paper. It gives the foundation for knowledge sharing and learning throughout the BMI project’s lifetime – and the base for whether the NBBMI project will succeed and even be implemented. However, as we show in the paper external BMI ecosystems and the project’s own BME in itself can – although the NBBMI project is functioning well and progressing – lay some serious barriers and challenges to further BMI progress. The paper aims to understand the cognitive mechanisms “at the later moment of a NBBMI process”, supporting participants’ ability and motivation to act together with each other in this project that have already taken off. The study is a new NBBMI study related to the 3. Quadrant of the Relations Axiom (Lindgren and Rasmussen, 2013), where BMI takes place outside the business and inside the BM of focus. The paper addresses knowledge sharing and learning in high risk and sensitive areas of NBBMI, where businesses open up their core business, core BMs and core competences and expects trust, progression and fulfilment of success criteria – in other words results and momentum. This research paper addresses one longitudinal case study of NBBMI project commencing in 2013.