Creative challengers whose ideas keep colliding with the core business are moved into a resourced innovation hub with its own budget and freedom, and with a defined path for their work back into the core.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
For three years a senior process chemist at a commodity plastics producer had argued that customers would soon demand recycled-content resin, and the plant directors found the argument tiresome and the trial requests disruptive. The chief executive created a Future Materials Lab, put the chemist in charge with a six-million-dollar budget and freedom from the quarterly review, and wrote two rules into its charter: the lab could run up to four plant trials a year, scheduled by the chief operating officer, and could sign development agreements directly with customers. Within eighteen months the lab had a recycled-content grade in trial with the company's largest packaging customer, and the plant directors had stopped fielding the chemist's requests.
Why it works
The hub offers what the core denied, a title, a budget, autonomy, and room to work, so accepting it looks better than staying, and it is easier, because the daily friction with skeptical line managers goes away. Arguing from inside the core also loses its appeal once the hub is where new ideas belong. It works when the creatives have unmet grievances about recognition and autonomy and the company wants to invest in innovation. Whether it is a real bet or a containment move depends on the hub's links to the P&L: trial slots, customer access, and a decision path.
The thinking behind it
Jeffrey Pfeffer Pfeffer's Power in Organizations (1981) treats power as coming largely from structural position: control of resources, information, and the decision process. A hub with its own budget gives its people resources while moving them away from the core business's decision process. Whether the posting is a real bet depends on restoring that position through trial slots, customer access, and decision dates, which is what the charter in the clean form does.
Erving Goffman In On Cooling the Mark Out: Some Aspects of Adaptation to Failure (1952), Goffman describes how organizations help people who lost a role or status accept the loss without making trouble, often by offering a substitute status that lets them save face. A hub posting can be exactly that, a prestigious title in place of influence. Whether the hub's work can reach production separates a bet from a cooling-out, which is why challengers should read the charter before they accept.
When it fits
A few creative people pressing ideas the core business cannot absorb yet, friction that is costing both sides, and the budget and authority to set up a separate unit make the case. You need a genuine belief that some of their ideas could matter, and the authority to give the hub a route back into production.
How to use it well
Before you staff the hub, write its path to production into the charter: trial slots, customer access, a named sponsor in the core, decision dates. A charter with no route to customers tells everyone what the hub is for.
- Offer the role openly, with the charter, and let the person decide.
- Give real resources and real freedom from the core's review cycles.
- Judge the hub by what reaches customers or production, and report that to the board.
- Keep the hub's people in the core's planning meetings, so ideas travel both ways.
What it costs and where it backfires
Far from the P&L, a hub loses its ideas in hand-offs, and its people eventually see that and leave. The core may start treating the hub as the place to send anyone inconvenient. The move crosses the line when the hub is built to cut challengers off from decisions while it is sold to them as a promotion, or when its outputs are designed never to reach production; that is deception and isolation, and the company loses the ideas it was paying for.
When it is used on you
Before accepting a hub role, check the reporting line, the decision rights, and whether the hub may ship product or sign customers directly. Ask what happens to a successful prototype and get the answer in writing, and keep your relationships with the plants and the P&L owners.