Corporate entrepreneurship: empirical considerations for fostering entrepreneurial internal environments.

Abstract: We explore what factors are relevant in creating and fostering a creative, innovative and entrepreneurial internal environment in established organizations, through the perception of those who manage them. Towards this end we conduct semi-structured interviews to perform qualitative case studies, in three companies, drawing on the knowledge and insight from 12 managers. We take an inductive, explorative approach to our research, but supplement our findings with existing literature in the relevant field of Corporate Entrepreneurship. On this basis we argue that, from a managerial perspective, there are three interrelated key dimensions, consisting of several factors, that are critical in creating and fostering an organizational environment that is conducive to corporate entrepreneurship. We claim that when managers strive to create an innovative and entrepreneurial environment, they perceive that the dimensions of Cultural Drive, Organizational Access, and Leadership Encouragement are dimensions which can either effectively drive or impede creativity and innovation. Our argument builds on an in-depth methodological analysis of the statements from the managers interviewed, as well as the corroborating existing literature we uncovered. Our analysis contributes to the existing academic discourse through being thoroughly grounded in empirical data, as well as offering actionable insights into a field which is becoming ever more relevant.