Characteristics, antecedents, and consequences of agile R&D units' organization : a conceptual framework

The information systems and operations management fields have exhaustively investigated the concept of agility. However, innovation management literature has almost neglected the topic, particularly agile R&D units, on which large industrial companies increasingly rely. To investigate this practically relevant but academically under-explored phenomenon's characteristics, antecedents, and consequences, we conducted an explorative-qualitative study with R&D managers and agility experts. Our findings' integration in extant literature provides a holistic framework of agile R&D units' organization (ARDO). The results reveal the complementary capabilities to gain agility and facilitate future empirical investigations, thus advancing scarce research on agility's capability perspective in innovation management.