O'connor, DeMartino (2006)

Question 1

Structural aspects of radical innovation management system:

Answer 1

1. discovery
2. incubation
3. acceleration

Question 2

Organizing for radical innovation:
Idea generator model

Answer 2

Designed to identify RI opportunities and to stimulate others to develop RI ideas. Highly linked to the technology community. Ideas are aligned with divisions’ markets and business models and are transferred there in a fairly “raw” state.

Question 3

Organizing for radical innovation:
Incubator

Answer 3

Identifies RI opportunities, but nurtures them along the business creation path as well. This means experimenting with potential market applications, and exploring potential partnerships and business models etc

Question 4

Organizing for radical innovation:
Holistic sequential model

Answer 4

Uncovering and incubating RI opportunities and providing the protection and coaching necessary to evolve these businesses toward commercial self-sufficiency to the point where they can compete for resources with other product lines in the operating units that will eventually become their homes.

Question 5

Organizing for radical innovation:
Corporate venturing unit

Answer 5

Focuses on nurturing separate internal ventures, with the objective that each could ultimately become a subsidiary or a new division of the company. The new venture model focused on driving the projects that were furthest along toward commercial reality and did not retain the idea-generation and early-incubation capabilities the original group had developed.

Question 6

Organizing for radical innovation:
R&D management system

Answer 6

Though central R&D plays a major role in most of the cases, there were three cases in the sample for which central R&D was the sole organization in the company responsible for RI. There is some technology bias in this system so the firms have created a mechanism to increase market learning: “exploratory market groups” with central research on new markets with which the firm is not familiar.

Question 7

Organizing for radical innovation:
Self-similair model

Answer 7

A corporate-level RI organization is created with smaller-scale organizations throughout the firm. The term self-similar means that it repeats itself at different levels. The focus of the of this model is not on generating new ideas into the pipeline as much as on gaining clarity of strategy about how the business might be grown to impact the company’s growth rate significantly. It promotes radical innovation at both corporate and divisional level but requires ideas and high-uncertainty projects to have attained some level of technical and market promise.

Question 8

Organizing for radical innovation:
Mirrored model

Answer 8

Projects are identified, selected, and incubated within the R&D organization. However, at the same time, in whichever division that appears to be appropriate for receiving a particular RI project, a complementary capability is developed: “Acceleration capability”. A general manager is hired or appointed to begin building the infrastructure of the business, including searching for potential acquisition candidates, value-chain partners and appropriate talent

Question 9

Key Message

Answer 9

Organizing for Radical Innovation: An Exploratory Study of the Structural Aspects of RI Management Systems in Large Established Firms