The Adaptive Hybrid: Innovation with Virtual Work

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many organizations to embrace virtual work, with some initial data suggesting that productivity may have increased. But these short-term gains may mask a longer-term threat to the ability of organizations to innovate. Drawing on social network theory, we show how each of the three stages of innovation (idea generation, idea incubation, and scaling) can be undermined by virtual work. We propose an alternative organizational design that leaders can adopt to overcome these limitations—the Adaptive Hybrid Model. This approach recognizes that the network connections needed for each of the three stages of the innovation process require different types of social capital and identifies how managers can blend virtual and face-to-face work to avoid the loss of connections and social capital that virtual work brings