The Model Innovation and Organizational Structure: A Zoom Lens on Organizational Structure

This chapter presents a comparison of the first 17 applications of the Model Innovation and Organizational Structure (or ‘the MIOS’) in organizations. This MIOS is a cybernetic model containing ‘necessary and sufficient’ functions that should be fulfilled in an organization that aims to remain viable. It is both a research and diagnostic tool developed to study organizational structures, including the ‘innovation structure’, by making a systematic description. By systematically comparing organizational structures of successfully innovating organizations, the ultimate aim is to deliver concrete design guidelines for a well-integrated embedded innovation structure. This should help to improve the persistently low performance of innovation and change activities (less than 30% success on average) by organizations. To date, seventeen organizations have been studied. In spite of the pragmatic sampling by the student researchers and the limited number of very different cases, the comparison shows a few promising results: