0000000000225962
AUTHOR
Carole Donada
Facilitating radical innovation through secret technology-oriented skunkworks projects: Implications for human resource practices
Technology-oriented skunkworks projects aim at facilitating radical innovation through approaches different from ‘normal’ research and development processes and have their specific organisational challenges. Joint human resource management (HRM) and innovation management research on HRM requirements for technology-oriented skunkworks is so far scarce, revealing a timely research gap and propelling our research question: what are the human resources (HR) practices that best support secret technology-oriented skunkworks projects (compared to HR practices in innovation contexts)? An exploratory case study of a skunkworks project at PSA Peugeot-Citroën (currently Groupe PSA) reveals seven skunk…
Managing skunkworks to achieve ambidexterity: The Robinson Crusoe effect
Abstract Literature on ambidexterity emphasizes the need for both exploration and exploitation. Large firms usually choose to implement structural ambidexterity to separate both activities. We here focus on an extreme case of such structural partitioning implemented as a secret skunkworks project in a large French automotive company. A qualitative survey using both primary and secondary data shows that the major basic and initial characteristics of a skunkworks (i.e. secrecy, urgency, and autonomy) created favorable conditions for the technological exploration. However, exploitation failed due to precisely those same characteristics coupled with the fact that the project did not respond to …