Prendre le temps d'innover vite : le rôle des start-ups internes dans l'organisation globale de l'innovation

Innovation requires time and it seem to be quiet not easy to be creative under the gun (Amabile et al., 2002). To date, scholars point some useful elements to make this possible (Sheremata, 2000). It does require integrative forces that support rapid routinized practices that can be combined with some generative forces to capture new knowledge's and foster novelty. A growing number of academic publications on organizational ambidexterity bring some key elements on how to manage these two opposite mechanisms. These streams of research recently advise that business venturing could bring together these forces in organization (Hill and Birkinshaw, 2012). In line with these researches, we hypothesize that this specific organizational form might have positive consequences to fast innovation. However, this literature did not explain how these two opposite mechanisms can be managed. The longitudinal study of four Internals business venturing hosted within an SBU of a multinational firm, highlight how to combine the two opposite forces in a specific time pressure context. We show how the organizational ambidexterity based on internal business venturing strengthens generative forces and fosters explorative innovation under time pressure. However, when project objectives are not clear and that innovative knowledge is too close to core business, integrative forces can drive out the positive effects of generative forces. In that case, specific managerial mechanisms are required to protect generative forces.