The Importance Of Radical Innovation

Radical innovation can be a major disruption for a company. The management of radical innovation is a challenge for companies. In recent years, companies have introduced a new lexicon – chief innovation officer, vice-presidency (VP) of innovation and technology, director of radical innovation and similar terminology. It suggests that, companies are looking for organizational and managerial systems to cope with disruption, to organize and manage radical innovation in a more systematic way, to become less dependent on champions and serendipity.

In the literature we also see growing concern for the management of disruption, of uncertainties (e.g. Loch et al, 2008; McMullen and Shepherd, 2006; Milliken, 1987), of radical innovation (e.g. Gassmann

However, literature has remained largely mute around the organizational function that encompasses structural ambidexterity. We argue that creating an ambidexterity unit is not enough for performing radical innovation systematically. Actually, the construct "unit" must be precise, since it is possible to have a unit to develop a single project, as in the aircraft industry (Ferreira, Salerno and Lourenção, 2011), or in task forces to develop Apple computers, as the Macintosh. That would suggest ambidexterity as a project structure, living during project life. We argue that to manage radical innovation in order to disrupt markets systematically it is necessary to consolidate a special organizational function – the Innovation Function (IF), a more perennial structure independent of a single project. Moreover, according to O’Connor (2012), innovation is as a cross-functional and collaborative enterprise, demanding integration of different actors inside and outside the firm. O’Connor (2012) called for a consideration of innovation as a business function rather than as a process. She defined a function as follows: an organizationally recognized group with responsibility and accountability for a specific mission of the company.” In this case, the mission is radical innovation, meaning innovation that offers new growth

Chandler, 1962; Barney, 1991). Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) and Thompson (1967) proposed a framework for investigating such phenomena - differentiation and integration among organizational units (functions) - which helps understating different formal structures, different goal orientations, and mechanisms of integrations of organizational