View article

‘Radical innovation’ poses many new challenges for an organisation and requires new competencies, some of which may conflict with existing best practices for incremental innovations. ‘Innovation hubs’ are a type of organisational structure dedicated to radical innovation projects that have been used by companies to manage these conflicts. This paper reports on a study of six innovation hubs that attempts to discover why some have failed whilst others have flourished. Conclusions are drawn on what management practices are most conducive to a successful innovation hub; and how greater value could be derived by the mainstream organisation through the cross-fertilisation of ideas, knowledge and culture.