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Innovation ‘labs’ and ‘garages’ and units sometimes simply called ‘X’ are mushrooming in large corporations. Such new venture units are, however, not a novel phenomenon and have gone in and out of fashion since the 1970s. Extant work conceives of these units as vehicles for corporate venturing and discusses them as places that allow internal new ventures to grow in an environment, designed specifically to support and protect the development of fledgling new ventures with the appropriate culture and routines, until they are ready to be adopted by the mainstream organization. This understanding is, however, colored by the common conceptual and methodological choices of prior research and may overlook other meanings of NVUs. In this study, we thus problematize the ‘settled’ view of NVUs in the literature and study corporations’ intersubjectively shared, situated and culturally embedded ideas about NVUs, and their essential characteristics, that are embodied in visual representations of NVUs. For this purpose, we explore recurring, typified symbolic instantiations of actors and acts, as well as the use of visual language, in 464 images used to present and introduce NVUs on the websites of 30 large, European corporations. We find that the habitat of NVUs, and life inside it, (i.e. NVUs way of working and working conditions) and not ventures and outputs are central to the visual discourse."

Corporations across industry and geographic boundaries are once again turning to new venture units (NVUs) as a means to organize for corporate entrepreneurship. In descriptions of what their innovation ‘garages’ or ‘labs’ are and do, firms habitually position these NVUs as a vital infrastructure or breeding ground for entrepreneurial activity. The notion entrepreneurial activity, here, appears to refer to a set of activities that are recurring and considered to be meaningful in the context of NVUs. Though it is an umbrella term describing a multi-stage problem-solving process encompassing a set of interrelated yet distinct tasks and behaviors, however, what firms believe to constitute entrepreneurial activity typically remains unarticulated. To explore the corporate understanding of ‘entrepreneurial activity’ in the context of NVUs, in this study, we turn to the spatial design of these units as a window onto the processes, activities and relationships corporations believe to be associated with them. In our theoretically grounded analysis of 178 images depicting physical environments associated with NVUs collected from the websites of 30 large, established corporations in north-western Europe where companies introduce and present their NVUs, we find that the spatial language in the images is surprisingly narrow and depicts these units as primarily communal spaces, which are geared towards social behavior and make little room for complex, individual cognitive work.

New venture units (NVUs) are once again attracting interest among corporations across industry and geographic boundaries as a means to organize for entrepreneurship. In descriptions of their innovation ‘garages’ or ‘labs’, as well as what they are and do, firms typically present these NVUs as a vital infrastructure or breeding ground for entrepreneurial activity. The notion entrepreneurial activity, here, appears to refer to a set of activities that are recurring and considered to be meaningful in the context of NVUs. What firms believe to constitute entrepreneurial activity, however, typically remains unarticulated and taken for granted. In light of our scholarly understanding of entrepreneurial activity as an umbrella term describing a multi-stage problem-solving process encompassing a set of interrelated yet distinct tasks and behaviors, this is rather surprising. To explore the corporate understanding of ‘entrepreneurial activity’ in the context of NVUs, in this study, we turn to the spatial design of these units as a window onto the processes, activities and relationships corporations believe to be associated with them.

This, previous version of the abstract is included in the conference proceedings.

New venture units (NVUs) are semi-autonomous units that accommodate entrepreneurial activities within large corporations. Over the past 40 years, NVUs have not only gone through multiple cycles of waxing and waning popularity but have also evolved considerably. Today, they are once again gaining prominence and typically referred to as corporate innovation ‘garages’ or ‘labs’. While extant research has explored previous genera- tions of NVUs and the managerial challenges associated with them, however, little is known about contemporary NVUs. In this study, we thus explore how contemporary NVUs should contribute to corporate entrepreneurship and focus on the what, why and how. We approach these questions by analyzing corporate communication about NVUs, in which corporations’ situated and shared understandings of contemporary NVUs are articulated. Using multimodal discourse analysis, we systematically analyze the verbal and visual elements of multimodal texts presenting, describing and introducing NVUs on corporate websites to uncover prevailing ideas about NVUs encoded in words, images and the interplay of both.