Strategic Roles and the Evolution of Innovation Units: A Process Model

Abstract

Innovation units in large, dispersed organizations are often mandated to follow different rules and dynamics than the rest of the organization. But our understanding about how such units evolve over time and integrate with the organization is scarce. Taking an activity-based view, this paper addresses the question of: How do the strategic roles of innovation units within an organization evolve over time? Through a qualitative longitudinal single case study of an innovation unit in a globally dispersed organization, the study finds that the unit evolves and changes its strategic roles. We derive a process-based framework defining three drivers of evolution at the micro, meso and macro level, which result in different strategic roles (culture building, network building and platform building) across three phases. A key feature of these strategic roles is the inherent misalignment with the organization. This study contributes to our understanding of the evolution of strategic roles of innovation units in large global organizations. We provide a refined theoretical perspective on misalignment as a key feature of the innovation unit’s strategic role which shapes its relationship with the organization.