"Organizing for Breakthrough Innovation: Leadership, Structures, and Processes"

Progress has been made in the scholarly literature in developing our understanding of factors that may contribute to success in commercializing breakthrough innovation, yet our approach has been piecemeal in nature. No studies to date have taken a systems-level approach to examine factors that may contribute to success in commercializing breakthrough innovation (BI). To address the question of how firms build a capability to conduct BI repeatedly, this study examines a set of elements that, together, combine to form a management system for innovation. The framework we adopt is based on organizational theory, which suggests that a management system includes appropriate leadership, management structures and processes that are relevant to the system's objectives. The model is elaborated and tested using data collected from 85 large firms that have BI programs. Results support our conceptualization of the various elements of the management system and their interrelationships and explain substantial variance i...