For Knowledge Scouts, Broader Isn’t Better

Innovation scouts who work across multiple divisions struggle to launch products successfully

Based on the research of Francisco Polidoro Jr.

In the world of sports, scouts look for promising new talent to create championship teams. In the technology world, many large companies use knowledge scouts in a similar way. A 2024 Gartner survey found 48% of R&D organizations have a formal technology scouting process.

Scouts bridge gaps between external startups and in-house teams to spark innovation. They source new ideas and knowledge from the outside world, helping companies create new and better products and make processes more efficient.

But new research from Francisco Polidoro Jr., professor of management at Texas McCombs, finds a hidden tension among knowledge scouts. A key part of their role — working with multiple divisions to foster collaboration — can actually make them less effective, not more.

Those who frequently work across divisions, he found, are less likely to see projects through to completion.

“Scouts are intermediaries, brokers,” Polidoro says. “They straddle both worlds. We find that what they learn — both cognitively and in the relationships they build — does not necessarily transfer across divisions.”

Divided, They Fail

In multidivisional firms, scouts often put down roots in one or more divisions. They support projects in specific divisions while also bringing new ideas to other teams across the entire organization.

Until now, though, it’s been unclear whether experience in one division translates to success in others, Polidoro says.

With Benoit Decreton of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Felipe Monteiro of INSEAD, he analyzed data on scouts’ activities at a large European telecommunications company. The researchers looked at 245 projects from 2005 to 2018 across its five divisions, which used knowledge from startups to help launch new products.

They found that scouts undertook 27% of their projects in divisions other than the ones in which they had previously completed most projects.

But those newer projects had disappointing results. Scouts who had supported other divisions were as much as 20% less likely to complete their current project successfully.

Why didn’t knowledge and relationships carry over from one division to another? Polidoro suggests some possible reasons.

Workplace cultural differences. A scout might overlook the fact that another division follows a different budgeting cycle or speaks in a different jargon. One division’s go-to decision maker might be a role to steer clear of in another division.

“Trust, support, and an understanding of unspoken political dynamics rarely transfer seamlessly across divisions,” Polidoro says.

Team rivalry. Scouts became less effective when they worked across divisions that shared both similar products and customers and thus competed with each other. The more the overlap, the greater the negative effect.

Familiarity Breeds Success

The researchers found one factor, however, that boosted scouts’ chances of success: familiarity.

When a scout’s insights echoed ideas a division had already worked with, the project was more likely to succeed. Teams could align quickly and focus on the right features in early prototypes.

For companies, the study highlights the challenges of managing knowledge scouts, Polidoro says. He recommends:

• Balance their roles between deep specialization and broader exposure.
• Rotate them across divisions that don’t directly compete, while focusing them on areas where both divisions have worked already.
• Assign them one or two projects a year that adapt an external idea for multiple divisions at once.
• Train them in cultural skills such as championing innovations and navigating internal politics.

“You just have to be more strategic,” Polidoro says. “Companies need to be more mindful of how they rotate scouts across projects and time.”

“Deeply Rooted and Versatile? Knowledge Scouts and External Knowledge Integration in Multidivisional Firms” is published online in the Academy of Management Journal.

Story by Deborah Lynn Blumberg