COVID-19 fueling innovation capabilities: the case of medicine innovation Lab (MIL)

Organizations have been long seeking for building innovation capabilities to become game-changers in the market or being flexible against the changes that threaten them. An increasingly adopted approach is the establishment of an internal Innovation Function (IF) to coordinate the diverse and complementary innovation efforts within and around the organization. Although companies typically engage with initiatives for innovation capability building in good times and tend to quickly turn the focus back on short term issues in periods of crisis, this paper discusses a somewhat contraintuitive case of a niche-focused Health Insurance Company in which the unprecedented power of the COVID-19 fueled the efforts towards establishing an IF despite the risks it first represented to the business. Based on a 4-month participative observation, we present the case of the Medicine Innovation Lab implementation (MIL), showing how the raising of the pandemic crisis affected the dynamics of MIL implementation, identifying and discussing the associated deployments of COVID-19 distinct dimensions, such as legal, funding availability and internal projects nurturing. Lastly, we propose paths for further investigation, including the post-crisis effect.