Innovation hubs: why do these innovation superstars often die young?

"Whilst ‘incremental innovation' is an imperative for the short-to-medium term success of a company, there is also a need for companies to engage in innovation activity that goes beyond the incremental in order to guarantee long-term success. However, such ‘radical innovation' (RI) poses new challenges 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 RI projects that have been used by companies to manage these conflicts by maintaining a certain degree of separation from the culture and routines of the mainstream organisation. Unfortunately, it would appear that many attempts to set-up innovation hubs have ended in failure within a few years; not before considerable time, effort and resource has been expended. This paper reports on a study of six innovation hubs that attempts to discover the causes of failure of innovation hubs through the comparison of successful and failed hubs. Success factors for innovation hubs are also discussed and suggestions are made as to lessons that can be learned from the experiences of innovation hubs."