Innovation theater in corporate venturing units: Cultural design as a (de)legitimizing mechanism
kHUB post date: September 2024
Originally published: January 15, 2024 (PDMA JPIM • Vol. 41, Issue 1 • January 2024)
Read time: 55 minutes
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This paper builds theory on theatrical cultural design in corporate venturing units, such as manifested in playful esthetics (foosball tables and beanbags), startup lingo, or youthful behavior (building with Lego bricks and informal dressing). We develop a set of propositions, illuminating how theatrical cultural design can (de)legitimize corporate venturing units, highlighting three different functions: attention-direction function, social categorization function, and escapist function. In addition, we explain how such changes in legitimization can influence the resilience of corporate venturing units. Our framework contributes to an emergent debate on innovation theater by pointing to the possibility of innovation theater as a constructive process in contemporary innovation management practices.
Practitioner Points
- Corporations increasingly establish corporate venturing units to anticipate and address disruptive challenges.
- Many of these units exhibit a particular theatrical cultural design, such as playful furniture (fuzzball tables, popcorn machines), startup lingo, youthful dress code, or acts of playfulness (building with Lego bricks, sketching cartoons with colorful pens).
- Such innovation theatre can be both productive and destructive for corporate venturing units:
- Innovation theatre can enable a corporate venturing unit to achieve minimum viable legitimacy, increasing the likelihood of producing tangible outcomes and continuing its activities despite difficulties and setbacks.
- If misused, however, innovation theatre can create inflated expectations on the corporate venturing unit, leading to a loss of legitimacy and widespread disappointment.
- We, therefore, highlight the risks of combining stretch goals with an overly theatrical design.