Ever since its commitment to the Copenhagen Accord of 2009 to lower its carbon emissions by 2020 to a level that will be 40% below those of 2005, China has been aiming to develop its photovoltaic (PV) solar energy industry. Because knowledge is a critical factor for obtaining a sustainable competitive advantage in a knowledge-intensive industry, it is essential to build up an interactive learning and communicating platform as a facilitator to absorb, distribute and create knowledge within a firm and among its suppliers and customers. However, relevant literature has, hitherto, never discussed such an intermediary platform for innovation. Therefore, this paper proposes some conceptual assumptions to solve this problem. After a practical investigation, this paper seeks to find suitable intermediaries for innovation at different levels of the PV solar energy supply chain in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.