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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.
The organizational capability to adapt to the fast and radical changes of market parameters becomes a prerequisite for companies’ long-term survival. In this context, organizational ambidexterity has gained much attention in research and practice. It is the capability to develop new businesses (exploration) while simultaneously optimizing the existing core businesses (exploitation). Established companies face several challenges in achieving this capability, as the underlying learning modes of exploration and exploitation are mutually incompatible. One way to solve these challenges is to separate the exploration-oriented part from the core organization. Corporate venturing has been widely recognized as one tool to create these dual structures to develop new businesses, based on discontinuous innovation. In recent times, new corporate venturing forms emerge in practice. This growing number of different forms has led to new applications of corporate venturing which go beyond the pure development of new businesses, toward supporting the entrepreneurial transformation of companies. This study aims at answering how different corporate venturing forms contribute to the strategic renewal of established companies. For this purpose, qualitative research methods are used to analyze data from 17 interviews conducted in two German high-tech companies. The study at hand provides empirical evidence in the field of corporate venturing by uncovering new insights about the different transformational effects of corporate venturing initiatives on the core organization. It further reveals that corporate venturing forms can be classified into two categories according to their respective level of entrepreneurship and frequency of execution. Both categories exhibit different transformational effects and can be understood as being complementary to each other.
Forschungsfrage: Welche Rollen lassen sich in Corporate Entrepreneurship identifizieren? Wie unterscheiden sich diese anhand verschiedener Merkmale und welche Fähigkeiten scheinen besonders relevant für ihre erfolgreiche Ausführung?
Methodik: Explorative Studie mit 56 semi-strukturierten Interviews mit Corporate-Entrepreneurship-Aktivitäten im DACH-Raum
Praktische Implikationen: Ein genaues Verständnis über die jeweiligen Rollen, ihre Unterschiedlichkeiten und Anforderungen ist notwendig, um die verschiedenen Corporate-Entrepreneurship-Aktivitäten mit passendem Personal zu besetzen.
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.
Nachhaltiger Unternehmenserfolg erfordert die Umsetzung von Ambidextrie in der Organisation: Das Nebeneinander von effizienter Optimierung im Kerngeschäft und strategischer Innovation und Transformation in neue Geschäftsfelder. „Eingebettete Unternehmerteams“ werden in diesem Kapitel als eine konkrete Form der Implementierung hierzu vorgestellt. Mit kleinen, autonomen und agilen Teams werden iterativ und unternehmerisch neue Geschäftsfelder aufgebaut. Dies verbessert die Innovationsfähigkeiten und Veränderungskompetenzen und unterstützt die notwendige digitale Transformation im Unternehmen. Für solche hybriden Formen der Organisation sind spezielle Rollen und Profile erfolgskritisch: Der angestellte Unternehmer bzw. Corporate Entrepreneur oder Intrapreneur und sein Team. Dieses Kapitel stellt diese Rollen mit den wesentlichen Aufgaben vor und diskutiert detailliert hierfür erfolgskritische Kompetenzen und Charakteristiken sowie das Zusammenspiel im Team. Anhand zahlreicher Praxisbeispiele werden erfolgreiche angestellte Unternehmer beschrieben, sodass für den Leser ein greifbares Bild dieser Rolle und dafür geeigneter Persönlichkeiten entsteht. Darüber hinaus zeigt das Kapitel auf, wie die Einführung und Umsetzung eingebetteter Unternehmerteams das unternehmerische Handeln, Corporate Entrepreneurship in der Organisation und mit alternativen Karrierepfaden auch die Attraktivität als Arbeitsgeber stärkt.
Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) supports the strategic renewal of established companies. Corporate venturing represents one key concept of CE that supports companies to strengthen their innovation capabilities. For the successful implementation of corporate ventures dual structures are recommended. The question, how the interface should be designed, plays a crucial role. Although it seems to be an important factor, this aspect requires further attention. One relevant element of the interface design are the different roles of the individuals that are interacting within the interface. This study is based on nine interviews that are representing six internal corporate ventures within one large German corporate from the ICT sector. The results that were mirrored with short case studies of 25 additional companies of the data sample, contribute to a better understanding of the interface design by adding insights about roles in corporate entrepreneurship. This deeper understanding about roles allows to draw conclusions on the interface design from a structural point of view.