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Research credits corporate entrepreneurship (CE) with enabling established companies to create new types of innovation. Scholars have focused on the organizational design of CE activities, proposing specific organizational units. These semi-autonomous units create a tense management situation between the core organization and its CE activities. Management and organization research considers control as a key managerial function for help. However, control has received limited research attention regarding CE units, leaving design issues for appropriate control of CE units unanswered. In this study, we link management control and CE to illustrate how control is understood in the context of CE. For this, we scanned the CE literature to identify underlying attributes and characteristics that allow specifying control for CE. We identified 11 attributes to describe control for CE activities in a first round and to derive future research paths.
Regional economies clearly benefit from thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems. However, ecosystems are not yet entirely gender-inclusive and therefore are not tapping their full potential. This is most critical with respect to technology-based entrepreneurship which features the largest gender imbalance. Despite the considerably growing amount of literature in the two research fields of female entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems, the intersection of the two areas has not yet been outlined. We depict the state of knowledge with a structured review of the literature highlighting bibliometric information, methods used, and the main topics addressed in current articles. From there, recommendations for future research are derived.
Text produced by entrepreneurs represents a data source in entrepreneurship research on venture performance and fund-raising success. Manual text coding of single variables is increasingly assisted or replaced by computer-aided text analysis. Yet, for the development of prediction models with several variables, such dictionary-based text analysis methods are less suitable. Natural language processing techniques are an alternative; however, the implementation is more complex and requires substantial programming skills. More work is required to understand how text analytics can advance entrepreneurship research. This study hence experiments with different artificial intelligence methods rooted in Natural Language Processing and deep learning. It uses 766 business plans to train a model for the automated measurement of transaction relations, a construct which is an indicator for new technology-based firm survival. Empirical findings show that the accuracy of construct measurement can be significantly increased with automated methods and improves with larger amounts of training data. Language complexity sets limits to the precision of automated construct measurement though. We therefore recommend a hybrid approach: making use of the inherent advantages of combining automated with human coding until the amount of training data is sufficiently large to substitute the human coding completely. The study provides insights into the applicability of different text analytics methods in entrepreneurship research and points at future research potential.
Uncertainty about the future requires companies to create discontinuous innovations. Established companies, however, struggle to do so; whereas independent startups seem to better cope with this. Consequently, established companies set up entrepreneurial initiatives to make use of startups' benefits. Consequently, this led-amongst others-to great interest in socalled corporate entrepreneurship (CE) programs and to the development and characterization of several different forms. Their processes to achieve certain objectives, yet, are still rather ineffective. Thus, considerations of the actions performed in preparation for and during CE programs could be one approach to improve this but are still absent today. Furthermore, the increasing use of several CE programs in parallel seems to bear the potential for synergies and, thus, more efficient use of resources. Aiming to provide insights to both issues, this study analyzes actions of CE programs, by looking at interviews with managers of seven corporate incubators and accelerator programs of five established German tech-companies.
Entrepreneurial employees
(2019)
Volatile markets and accelerating innovation cycles progressively force established companies to adopt alternative innovation strategies such as entrepreneurship. Due to the key role entrepreneurial employees play for strengthening the company's abilities for innovation and change, various concepts have emerged like corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. While the extant literature has increasingly examined only specific issues of entrepreneurial employees, an overall view on it lacks investigation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to structurally present current research on entrepreneurial employees by conducting a broad systematic literature review. The resulting research streams contribute to a clearer justification for future research and are a first step towards a comprehensive research view related to intrapreneurship.
Entrepreneurial motivations have become a frequently discussed topic in entrepreneurship research. However, few studies investigated entrepreneurs' motivation across gender and different venture types and tend to rely on surveys or case studies. By using a text mining approach, we investigate if there are differences between male and female entrepreneurs' motivation and if female entrepreneurs' motivation differs across different venture types. This text mining approach in combination with a qualitative content analysis was used to examine unique motivational data from 472 entrepreneurial projects from three different entrepreneurship support programs in Norway and Sweden. Findings suggest that motivation of female and male entrepreneurs differ only slightly, while motivation of female entrepreneurs differs according to the different venture types. We thus contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurial motivation and to a better understanding of why female entrepreneurs start a business. This can, for instance, benefit the improvement of future female entrepreneurship support programs.
Prior quantitative research identified in the text of technology-based ventures' business plans distinctive performance patterns of evolving business models. Accordingly, interactions with customers, financiers, and people and the patenting strategy's status evolved and served as indicators of early-stage tech ventures' performance. With longitudinal data from five venture cases, this research sheds light on the evolving business model by validating the performance patterns, and elucidating how and why the ventures' business models evolved. Based on a generic systems theory framework for the indicators, the explanatory case studies re-contextualize the performance patterns taken from the snapshot perspective of business plans to the longitudinal perspective of technology-based ventures' life-cycle. This research confirms the relation of business model patterns of digital and non-digital ventures to the performance groups of failure, survival, or success and suggests a broader systems perspective for further research.
Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) units have become an increasingly important part of established companies’ development activities enabling them to also create more discontinuous innovations. As a result, companies have developed and implemented different forms of CE units, such as corporate accelerators, incubators, startup supplier programs, and corporate venture capital. Driven by the need to innovate, companies have even begun to use multiple CE units simultaneously. However, this has not been empirically investigated yet. Thus, with this study, we aim to shed some light on this by investigating the parallel use of multiple CE units in the German business landscape. We conducted an extensive desk research, combining, coding, and analyzing different sources. We found that 55 out of 165 large established companies have multiple CE units, which allowed us to characterize the parallel use and identify differences and similarities, e.g., in terms of industry, company size, and CE forms implemented. We conclude by presenting different implications for both practice and research and by pointing out directions for future research.
Today’s markets are characterized by fast and radical changes, posing an essential challenge to established companies. Startups, yet, seem to be more capable in developing radical innovations to succeed in those volatile markets. Thus, established companies started to experiment with various approaches to implement startup-like structures in their organization. Internal corporate accelerators (ICAs) are a novel form of corporate venturing, aiming to foster bottom-up innovations through intrapreneurship. However, ICAs still lack empirical investigations. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of the interface between the ICA and the core organization and the respective support activities (resource access and support services) that create an innovation-supportive work environment for the intrapreneurial team. The results of this qualitative study, comprising 12 interviews with ICA teams out of two German high-tech companies, show that the resources provided by ICAs differ from the support activities of external accelerators. Further, the study shows that some resources show both supportive as well as obstructive potential for the intrapreneurial teams within the ICA.
Female Entrepreneurship has gained interest over the last 20 years. Therefore, this paper analyses 7,320 articles of the research field ‘women in entrepreneurial context’ published in 885 journals. The sample is analyzed by using a machine learning and text mining based methodological approach. Aiming to provide a broad overview over the research literature, 41 clusters and 11 superordinate topics were identified. Major developments of research attention are outlined by analyzing bibliometric data of the period from 2000 to 2020. Overall growth in terms of research attention measured by the development of yearly citations per article is best noticeable in clusters ‘corporate social responsibility’, ‘brand’, and ‘corporate (-governance)’, and in superordinate topics ‘performance’, ‘education’, and ‘corporate (board/ management)’. There are also indicators for an overall increase of research attention and cluster variety. The synthesis provides an insight into most trending superordinate topics. Therefore, this literature review gives a comprehensive and descriptive overview as well as an insight into thematic trend developments of the research field.
Guiding through the Fog
(2021)
Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) programs are formalized efforts to realize entrepreneurial activities in established companies. Despite the growing and evolving landscape of CE programs, effectively managing them remains a challenging endeavor which results in disappointing outcomes and oftentimes leads to the early termination of such programs. We unmask the differences in goal setting of CE programs and highlight that setting appropriate goals is imperative for their desired outcomes. In practice, companies seem to struggle with the goal setting, and scholars have not yet fully solved the puzzle of goals setting in the context of CE programs either. Therefore, we set out to explore the current state of goal setting in the context of CE programs building upon 61 semi-structured interviews with CE program executives from cross-industry companies with different sizes. Our study contributes to a better understanding of goal setting in the context of CE programs by (1) characterizing the goal setting of CE programs based on goal attributes and goal types and (2) identifying differences among the goal setting of CE programs. We provide implications to practice for a more effective management of CE programs and conclude with a discussion for future research on the impact of the different goal settings.
Corporate venturing has gained much attention due
to challenges and changes that occur because of discontinuous
innovations – which seem to be promoted by digitalization. In this
context, open innovation has become a promising tool for
established companies to strengthen their innovation capabilities.
While the external opening of the innovation process has gained
much attention, the internal opening lacks on investigations.
Especially new organizational forms, such as Internal Corporate
Accelerators, have not been investigated sufficiently. This study,
which is based on 13 interviews from two German tech-companies,
contributes to a better understanding of this new form of corporate
venturing and the resulting effects on the organizational renewal.
Strategic renewal and the development of new types of innovation pose special challenges to established small and medium-sized companies. The paper at hand aims at answering the questions what the underlying mechanism of these challenges are and which approaches might help to properly counteracting them. This case study investigates the strategic renewal process and its corresponding interventions in a high-tech SME company during a four-year period. We analyse the findings in relation to existing frameworks for dynamic capabilities and strategic learning and provide new recommendations for practice and future research.
Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) became the new paradigm for organizations to cope with the accelerated development of innovations. Therefore, especially established organizations increasingly implement CE activities, even in combination. Scholars point out that a coordinated portfolio of CE activities could yield synergies and thus higher value for the organization and further call for more scientific examinations. This literature review aims to better the understanding of the combined and coordinated use of CE activities as well as about resulting synergies. Results show that there are only very few studies that addressed a combination and/or coordination of CE activities with respect to the creation of additional value, however, without empirical analyses. Yet, five categories of direct and indirect synergies could be derived. Discussing the results as well as the heterogenous use of terminology and concepts, this paper concludes with a research agenda for future analyses.
Innovation Labs
(2021)
Today's increasing pace of change and intense competition places demands on organizations to use a different approach to innovation, going beyond the incremental innovation that is typically developed within the core of the organization. As an option to escape the existing beliefs of the core organization, innovation labs are used to develop more discontinuous innovation. Despite the abundance of these so-called innovation labs in practice, researchers have devoted little effort to scrutinizing the concept and to provide managers with a framework for exploiting this form of innovation. In this paper, we aim to perform an empirical investigation and to create a consensus around the concept of innovation labs. To do so, we conducted a multiple case study in large international organizations with a total of 31 interviews of an average length of 70 minutes. We offer a framework by identifying four innovation lab types and consider when each is most appropriate. Furthermore, we highlight the importance for managers and their organizations to align the strategic intent with the innovation lab type as well as the interface between the innovation lab and the core business.
We have analyzed a pool of 37,839 articles published in 4,404 business-related journals in the entrepreneurship research field using a novel literature review approach that is based on machine learning and text data mining. Most papers have been published in the journals ‘Small Business Economics’, ‘International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business’, and ‘Sustainability’ (Switzerland), while the sum of citations is highest in the ‘Journal of Business Venturing’, ‘Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice’, and ‘Small Business Economics’. We derived 29 overarching themes based on 52 identified clusters. The social entrepreneurship, development, innovation, capital, and economy clusters represent the largest ones among those with high thematic clarity. The most discussed clusters measured by the average number of citations per assigned paper are research, orientation, capital, gender, and growth. Clusters with the highest average growth in publications per year are social entrepreneurship, innovation, development, entrepreneurship education, and (business-) models. Measured by the average yearly citation rate per paper, the thematic cluster ‘research’, mostly containing literature studies, received most attention. The MLR allows for an inclusion of a significantly higher number of publications compared to traditional reviews thus providing a comprehensive, descriptive overview of the whole research field.
In today's volatile world, established companies must be capable of optimizing their core business with incremental innovations while simultaneously developing discontinuous innovations to maintain their long-term competitiveness. Balancing both is a major challenge for companies, since different types of innovation require different organizational structures, operational modes and management styles. Established companies tend to excel in improving their current business through incremental innovations which are closely related to their current knowledge base and competencies. However, this often goes hand in hand with challenges in the exploration of knowledge that is new to the company and that is essential for the development of discontinuous innovations. In this respect, the concept of corporate entrepreneurship is recognized as a way to strengthen the exploration of new knowledge and to support the development of discontinuous innovation. For managing corporate entrepreneurship more effectively, it is crucial to understand which types of knowledge can be created through corporate entrepreneurship and which organizational designs are more suited to gain certain types of knowledge. To answer these questions, this study analyzed 23 semi-structured interviews conducted with established companies that are running such entrepreneurial activities. The results show (1) that three general types of knowledge can be explored through corporate entrepreneurship and (2) that some organizational designs are more suited to explore certain knowledge types than others are.
Business coaching is believed to effectively improve survival and success chances of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). However, not much empirical evidence on the support measure's effectiveness is available. Therefore, a pragmatic two-armed Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to test the effect of tactical business coaching on NTBF survival capabilities was designed and, for the most part, carried out. However, due to a lower than expected sample size and great attrition between groups, the RCT reveals deviations from the trial design that impede a thorough data assessment. Based on the data given, a first data analysis does not reveal significant differences in survival capability between the two groups. Thus, to provide guidance for future RCTs in business contexts, lessons learned about how to deal with trickle samples and experiment constellations with third parties carrying out the intervention are drawn.
This paper examines the corporate organisational aspects of the implementation of Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 builds on new technologies and appears as a disruptive innovation to manufacturing firms. Although we do have a good understanding of the technical components, the implementation of the management and organisational aspects of Industry 4.0 is under-researched. It is challenging to find qualitative empirical evidence which provides comprehensive insights about real implementation cases. Based on a case study in a German high value manufacturing firm, we explore the corporate organisation and implementation of Industry 4.0. By using the framework of Complex Adaptive System (CAS), we have identified three key factors which facilitate the implementation of Industry 4.0 namely 1.) Organisational structure changes such as the foundation of a central department for digital transformation, 2.) The election of a Chief Digital Officer as a personnel change, and 3.) Corporate opening up towards cooperating with partners as a cultural change. We have furthermore found that Lean Management is an important enabler that ensures readiness for the adoption of Industry 4.0.
The Role of Support-Activities for the successful Implementation of Internal Corporate Accelerators
(2018)
Think BIQ: Gender Differences, Entrepreneurship Support and the Quality of Business Idea Description
(2023)
Entrepreneurship support, its influencing factors and female entrepreneurship are recently discussed topics with great relevance for society and politics. However, research on the subject has been divergent in its results and lacks a focus on the impact of support programs’ characteristics concerning different types of entrepreneurs. Thus, we conduct a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on entrepreneurship support characteristics aiming to shed light on possible gender differences occurring in respective programs. We investigate the quality of business idea descriptions, as a predecessor for a high-potential business model, operationalized using inter alia causation and effectuation theory and social role theory as possible explanations. In our fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on a sample of 911 Norwegian ventures, we find a variety of differences related to the entrepreneurs’ gender. For instance, that financial support combined with a well described key contribution or careful planning seem to be more important antecedents for female entrepreneurs’ business idea quality than for males. Moreover, it seems a well-described key contribution has a positive effect on the outcome variable in most cases. Another interesting finding concerns the entrepreneurs’ network partners, where we found evident gender differences in our combinations. Female entrepreneurs seemingly benefitted from rather small networks, and males from big networks, although the former possess larger networks in the sample. In conclusion, we find that gender differences in combinations of entrepreneurship support for high business idea quality still occur even in a country like Norway, calling for an adaption of the provided support and environment.
Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is experiencing continuously increasing interest from scholars and practitioners. One reason for this seems to be rooted in the organizational structures of established companies, which are cumbersome for implementing organizational agility and for developing radical innovations. In view of the advancing digitalization, however, exactly this is required in order to be successful in the long-term. CE is a promising managerial tool that offers a wide range of options to pursue the creation of new businesses and to support the companies' transformation in order to adapt to changes in the environment. Even though CE offers a broad range of opportunities, the effective management is a challenge. One reason for this is the ambiguity when it comes to the differences between the various CE forms and the objectives that can be achieved by those. This study, which is based on 13 in-depth interviews from eight high-tech companies, contributes to a better understanding of CE by offering a first harmonized set of CE objectives that is suitable to compare and differentiate across the different forms. In addition to that, three CE types, offering a new perspective on how to differentiate CE forms, are identified and give implications for a more effective management.
Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) has now evolved into an imperative innovation practice of established companies. Despite organizational design models for CE activities and companies' frequent initiation of new activities, effectively managing them remains a challenging endeavor which results in disappointment about the outcomes of CE and its early termination. We assume specific types of goals for CE as one element of this unresolved management issue. While both practice and literature address goals in different contexts, no uniform picture has emerged so far. Although goals are commonly used to categorize CE activities, they seldomly seem to be the core subject of investigation. Based on this preliminary analysis and consolidation, we put the goals of CE in focus. In a systematic literature review, we reveal aspects of goals to unmask the different types of goals and their underlying dimensions and characteristics. Our review contributes to a better understanding of goals by (1) organizing relevant literature on goals of CE in a specific classification process, (2) describing dimensions and attributes for a systematic classification of CE goals; and (3) providing a framework showing differences of goals for the CE context. We conclude with a discussion and hints for future research paths.
Nowadays established companies use Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) as a means to create discontinuous innovations. Many companies thereby even implement multiple CE units that typically involve several entrepreneurial activities. This explorative study aimed to identify the reasons why established companies implement multiple CE units concurrently. In conducting a comparative case study with eight companies from different industries, valuable insights for science and practice were gained. We provide an overview of different 11 reasons for implementing multiple CE units. This shows that the combination of CE units used by companies differs depending on the reason. It further allowed to derive general approaches of established companies to the implementation of CE units. Last, we identify the concept of co-specialization to be a central driver explaining the creation of the need to set up multiple units. We conclude by indicating implications and subjects for future research.