Understanding Barriers to Internal Startups in Large Organizations: Evidence from a Globally Distributed Company

Abstract

Large global companies need to speed up their innovation activities to increase competitive advantage. However, such companies' organizational structures impede their ability to capture trends they are well aware of due to bureaucracy, slow decision-making, distributed departments, and distributed processes. One way to strengthen the innovation capability is through fostering internal startups. We report findings from an embedded multiple-case study of five internal startups in a globally distributed company to identify barriers for software product innovation: late involvement of software developers, executive sponsor is missing or not clarified, yearly budgeting and planning, unclear decision-making authority, lack of digital infrastructure for experimentation and access to data from external actors. Drawing on the framework of continuous software engineering proposed by Fitzgerald and Stol, we discuss the role of BizDev in software product innovation. We suggest that lack of continuity, rather than the lack of speed, is an ultimate challenge for internal startups in large global companies.

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of the Current State of Research into Globally Distributed Product Development

“…2, 8-53], a problem description [cf. [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71] or a combination of both [cf. 1,[72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88].…”

Digital Transformation – A Flow Perspective

“…The DT literature is with accounts of how digital initiatives and change (e.g., agile methods) emerge in a distinct unit (e.g., an IT department) and how other units not undergoing similar change resist this (Nwankpa & Roumani, n.d.;Sporsem et al, 2021;Tkalich et al, 2021;Wessel et al, 2021). Suggested solutions align regarding co-location, shared work practices, and shared goals interpreted considering correspondence of flows.…”

“…However, they were not attentive to each other's flows before they inevitably met resistance because the timing and the undergoing between the paths did not match. This lack of modality in the correspondence can be interpreted as concerns and barriers (Sporsem et al, 2021;Tkalich et al, 2021). However, an alternative view is that the resistance forced attentionality, transforming the future path of product development, wherein the company introduced mitigating actions, such as arranging arenas where flows of action could correspond and begin undergoing.…”

Sourcing data for data-driven applications: foundational questions

“…Others report how data, although seemingly abundant, are in fact limited (Krasikov et al, 2022). Projects are slowed down and ventures halted because of a lack of access to appropriate data (Rothe et al, 2019;Sporsem et al, 2021). When data are available, cries often ensue that the data are "incorrect (e.g., outdated), incomplete, biased, or irrelevant" (Polyviou and Zamani, 2022).…”