How Corporate Entrepreneurship Practices Impact Innovation—A Pilot Study

Corporate entrepreneurship, initially identified in 1971 (Peterson and Berger 1971; Sakhdari 2016), has received increased attention from practitioners and researchers, especially since its emergence as a separate area of innovation in the 1980s (Glinyanova et al. 2021). Corporate innovators have become increasingly interested in disruptive innovation, yet its core principles are not well understood (Christensen et al. 2018). Our research focused on the intersection of corporate entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation. With our own histories and experiences in corporate entrepreneurship rooted in incremental innovation, we were particularly interested in disruptive or transformational innovation. We investigated how established industrial organizations perceive and use corporate entrepreneurship activities for various types of innovation—particularly disruptive or transformational—and how these firms organize their efforts and resources accordingly.

Our aim was to determine how established industrial companies practice corporate entrepreneurship to advance innovation. To focus our research scope, we developed four key questions:

1. What models or approaches do organizations use for corporate entrepreneurship and to catalyze disruptive innovation?
2. What are the corporate entrepreneurship strategic profiles?
3. How are organizations structured to stimulate corporate entrepreneurship and catalyze disruptive innovation?
4. What is the usage and effectiveness of corporate venturing and strategic renewal approaches?