Using the Startup Studio model to structure Corporate Innovation Labs

The topic of how to structure the perfect corporate innovation lab comes up regularly when talking to innovation managers.

Some corporates have one big central lab where all innovation happens. It’s a separate department or business unit with its own resources and budget. The down-side of this is that innovation happens far away from the day-to-day business. It is sometimes perceived as the playground where the cool guys go to have fun. But when a team is disbanded, it is also often hard to get the team members back into the “normal” business. They moved out of their business unit and are now working at a different department and often have to re-apply for their old jobs.

Other corporates have an innovation lab per business unit. That brings innovation closer to the business, but it also makes it harder to get enough resources out of the business units into the lab. Sharing learnings is also much harder if your labs are distributed among the company.

In the last couple of weeks I have been thinking a lot about the startup studio model and how to apply that to corporate innovation.

A startup studio, also known as a startup factory, or a venture builder, is a studio-like company that aims at building several companies in succession. (Source: Wikipedia) Just like a movie studio that creates multiple movies in succession, using shared resources and learnings to be succesful. One of the best known startup studios is…