Corporate innovation labs fail regularly. The way I see it there are 4 reasons for this:
1/ Talent -- intrapreneurship is a tough quality to find in your teams. When it is found, it needs to be recognized and nurtured in ways most big corps treat as theater.
1/ Talent -- intrapreneurship is a tough quality to find in your teams. When it is found, it needs to be recognized and nurtured in ways most big corps treat as theater.
2/ Equity -- innovation comes from creative entrepreneurs. These folks won't give up their best ideas to their employer for the promise of another 2 weeks' worth of pay. How big orgs compensate in-house innovators makes or breaks the "lab."
3/ Exit strategy -- on the off chance that a corp innovation lab finds a big idea, what will they do with it? Without a clear sense of how an idea "exits" the lab most intrapreneurs won't pursue true innovation.
4/ Patience -- with average CEO terms running shorter than the average return time on a VC fund big corps don't have the patience to wait for big ideas to come out of innovation labs. They expect instant creativity (and ROI) or they kill the lab.
