Trends and determinants of managing virtual R&D teams

TLDR

Decentralization of R&D to local markets and centers of excellence has led to the rise of virtual project teams that enable transnational innovation, positioning them as a key element in future R&D organization. The authors identified four distinct virtual team structures from 204 interviews and propose a contingency framework that selects among them based on innovation type, systemic nature, knowledge mode, and resource bundling. Their analysis shows that virtual team success depends on matching the appropriate organizational form—decentralized self‑organization, system integrator coordination, core team architecture, or centralized venture team—to these four determinants.

Abstract

The past years have seen a decentralization of R&D to local markets and centres‐of‐excellence. Supported by modern information and communication technologies, ‘virtual project teams’ were formed to facilitate transnational innovation processes. With their boundaries expanding and shrinking flexibly with changing project necessities, virtual teams are believed to be an important element in future R&D organization. Based on 204 interviews with R&D directors and project managers in 37 technology‐intensive multinational companies we identify four distinct forms of virtual team organizations used to execute R&D projects across multiple locations. Ordered by increasing degree of central project coordination, these four team concepts are based on: (1) decentralized self‐organization, (2) a system integrator as a coordinator, (3) a core team as a system architect, and (4) a centralized venture team. Our contingency approach for organizing a transnational R&D project is based on four principal determinants: (1) the type of innovation (radical/incremental), (2) the systemic nature of the project (systemic/autonomous), (3) the mode of knowledge involved (tacit/explicit), and (4) the degree of resource bundling (complementary/redundant). According to our analysis, the success of virtual teams depends on the appropriate consideration of these determinants.