The growth of hybrid working has led to the emergence of hybrid workplaces, which blend physical and virtual spaces. Much remains to be understood regarding how the hybrid workplace influences key organizational processes and outcomes. This paper investigates the implications of the hybrid workplace for innovation, a critical driver of organizational competitiveness. By reviewing literature on organizing for innovation and new work arrangements, and drawing on socio-technical systems thinking, we explore how the hybrid workplace influences exploratory and exploitative innovation and the work system that supports them. On the one hand, the multiple spaces inherent to the hybrid workplace offer advantages: the domestic space aids individual work, the virtual space offers a structured support for interdependent tasks, while the office space facilitates collaborative creativity, learning, and serendipitous interactions. On the other hand, each of these spaces has equally its limitations. The aggregate use of the office, domestic and virtual spaces poses new challenges to the coordination and design of work. We propose three core opportunities for future research, providing a roadmap to address under-explored but important questions to leverage the characteristics of the hybrid workplace to support sustained innovation.
