What are the different models companies use for assigning the overall responsibility for innovation?
Governing innovation often starts with top management deciding, implicitly or explicitly, who will be in charge of innovation in the company. This allocation of responsibilities is generally done by choosing an organizational model among several options. My research suggests that there are at least nine models in use, some of which are more popular than others. Most companies use a primary model for assigning the overall responsibility for innovation to a person or group of persons and one or several supporting models to manage specific aspects of the process or cascade the responsibility down to divisional and operational entities. Here, in descending order of popularity, are the main primary models:
[This article has been reproduced with permission from IMD, a leading business school based in Switzerland. http://www.imd.org]