Corporations and entrepreneurs: Paradox and opportunity

doi:10.1016/0007-6813(87)90069-3

Business Horizons

Volume 30, Issue 4, July–August 1987, Pages 76-80

https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(87)90069-3 Get rights and content

Abstract

The intrapreneur is the corporate entrepreneur. But some people consider “corporation” and “entrepreneur” so opposite that “intrapreneur” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Not so, says the author, who argues that an organization without an entrepreneurial spirit becomes a bureaucracy. On the other hand, the small firm cannot depend on entrepreneurship alone. Without professional management it may stay small—or worse, go broke.

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There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (14)

Innovation Initiatives in Large Software Companies: A Systematic Mapping Study
2018, Information and Software Technology
Citation Excerpt :
They already have on going business and market that they must maintain (S26). Moreover, they also rely on bureaucracy and hierarchy to run the big and complex business [88]. When it comes to innovation, large software companies deal with the similar issue as other companies.
To keep the competitive advantage and adapt to changes in the market and technology, companies need to innovate in an organised, purposeful and systematic manner. However, due to their size and complexity, large companies tend to focus on the structure in maintaining their business, which can potentially lower their agility to innovate.
The aims of this study are to provide an overview of the current research on innovation initiatives and to identify the challenges of implementing those initiatives in the context of large software companies.
The investigation was primarily performed using a systematic mapping approach of published literature on corporate innovation and entrepreneurship, which was then complemented with interviews with four experts with rich industry experience.
Our mapping study results suggest that, there is a lack of high quality empirical studies on innovation initiative in the context of large software companies. A total of 7 studies are conducted in the context of large software companies, which reported 5 types of initiatives: intrapreneurship, bootlegging, internal venture, spin-off and crowdsourcing. Our study offers three contributions. First, this paper represents the map of existing literature on innovation initiatives inside large companies. The second contribution of this paper is to provide an innovation initiative tree. The third contribution is to identify key challenges faced by each initiative in large software companies.
At the strategic and tactical levels, there is no difference between large software companies and other companies. At the operational level, large software companies are highly influenced by the advancement of Internet technology. In addition, large software companies use open innovation paradigm as part of their innovation initiatives. We envision our future work is to further empirically evaluate the innovation initiative tree in large software companies. More practitioners from different companies should be involved in the future studies.
The behavior of business managers when adopting new technologies
1996, Technological Forecasting and Social Change
The use of technology in business is no longer a matter of choice, but rather one of survival. It is, therefore, a feature of most successful operations. Hence, a better understanding of the process of adopting new technologies is both essential and urgent. Past studies emphasize the major influence of management behavior on the initiation and development of the process of adopting new technologies.
Professor Howard Stevenson suggests a descriptive model of the behavior of managers. This model comprises five dimensions on a continuum with the characteristics of administrator behavior at one extreme and those of entrepreneurial behavior at the other.
Using the case study method, we proceeded to observe the complete development of 11 new technology adoption processes in the same number of small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms with between 50 and 249 employees. In 10 out of the 11 cases observed, the manager behaved as an entrepreneur in the technology adoption process.
Our research confirms that the advice given to foster the introduction of technologies and to manage the adoption process is adequate in the case of decision-makers who behave like administrators. Those who behave as entrepreneurs, the large majority, will never follow such advice.
Adopting new technologies: an entrepreneurial act
1993, Technovation
Market needs and the attraction of technology exert concurrent pressure on businesses to adopt new technologies. Yet it is widely acknowledged that North American companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, are slow to adopt new technologies. The classic explanation for this rate is often centered around managers' resistance to the changes that technology inevitably entails.
Adopting new technologies has major strategic impacts. Consequently, it is recognized that the key to capitalizing on the opportunities offered by technologies is an effective planning system. In practice, though, technology is usually not included in strategic planning. Moreover, the introduction of new technologies is more often either poorly planned or simply not planned at all. The argument most frequently advanced to explain this shortcoming is the natural tendency of managers not to plan.
An alternative explanation for these two phenomena may be that adopting a technology is actually an entrepreneurial rather than a managerial decision, the characteristics of which differ substantially from each other. If one analyzes the type of recommendations that the majority of authors make, it seems clear that they take it for granted that the adoption of technologies is a decision dictated by managerial behavior. This may explain why these recommendations are not well received by managers.
An analysis of the entire process of adopting a technology in three medium-size Canadian businesses clearly shows that the decision to adopt a technology is effectively entrepreneurial in nature, thus supporting the alternative explanation proposed here.
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2004, Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth
Recognizing opportunities when individual engaged in intrapreneurship: The role of creative self-efficacy and support for innovation
2022, Frontiers in Psychology
The intrapreneurial employee: toward an integrated model of intrapreneurship and research agenda
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¹: Joel Ross is professor of management at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton. His “Computers: Their Use and Misuse” appeared in the April 1972 issue of Business Horizons.

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Corporations and entrepreneurs: Paradox and opportunity

Abstract

Business Horizons

The New Corporate Elite

Business Week

In Search of Excellence

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices