Scaling Innovation : A framework for large corporations based on practical and theoretical insights

Sammanfattning: To survive in today’s highly competitive and fast changing environment large corporations continuously have to develop themselves and their value offering. As a way to manage this, many have established innovation departments to deal with the company’s offerings. Despite this, it is challenging to generate impact from new business initiatives with several uncertainties stemming from the phase where the initiatives are being scaled, referred to in theory and practice as the scaling phase. The challenges within this phase has as well been noticed by Deloitte Sweden who have identified an increase in requested support within the space of scaling innovation. The scaling phase is considered the biggest obstacle for new business initiatives because of its unpredictability. It is hence identified as a troublesome and strategically challenging area in corporate innovation in need for further investigation. The aim of this thesis was consequently to research and unveil the underlying difficulties causing the scaling to fall short and success factors that can prevent it. Practical industry insights and experiences have been gathered through semi-structured qualitative interviews with seven large corporations. All seven companies were interviewed individually on two separate occasions and the results from the first round of interviews constructed two research questions that guided the thesis; (1) What are the key principles that should be applied to create the best preconditions for large corporations throughout the scaling process? and (2) How can indicators be used throughout the scaling process to validate its progress? Results from both rounds of interviews were combined with the literature studies and together they indicated five difficulties and correlating success factors for large corporation scaling of new business initiatives. The difficulties and success factors were in turn divided into two prominent themes. The first theme includes the preparatory work in the process leading up to a decision of scaling, called; preconditions for scaling. The second theme covers how companies can validate the progress of the initiative during scaling, called; scaling progress validation. To intuitively communicate the difficulties, success factors, and corresponding recommendations they are presented as a framework: Corporate Innovation Scaling - Difficulties and Success Factors. The content of the framework aims to support the innovation departments throughout their innovation process and ultimately aid the scaling of new business initiatives.