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The intrapreneurship reactor: how to enable a start-up culture in corporations

Der Intrapreneurship-Reaktor: Wie man eine Start-up-Kultur in Unternehmen ermöglicht

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Abstract

Start-ups successfully deliver creative results, and their success highlights the need for corporate engagement with innovation (Weiblen and Chesbrough in California Management Review 57(2): 66–90, 2015). To assess insights on corporate high-involvement innovation activities, we developed and applied an intrapreneurship model within a multinational financial services corporation in Germany. Successful implementation requires that individuals have the autonomy to act as corporate entrepreneurs (i.e., intrapreneurs). To this end, we introduced a model for implementing and analysing intrapreneurship so corporations could develop a start-up culture. The corporation studied hosted an innovation competition called the Appathon, where competing teams developed app prototypes, and the winning team received funding for continued development. Afterwards, we completed qualitative and quantitative research by interviewing and surveying the competition participants to examine practical intrapreneurship and corporate and individual innovation. Our findings highlight the challenges surrounding the development of high-involvement innovation management routines (Bessant in High involvement innovation, 2003).

Zusammenfassung

Die erfolgreiche und schnellere, teilweise unkonventionelle, Entwicklung und Umsetzung kreativer Lösungen von Start-ups unterstreicht deutlich die wachsende Notwendigkeit für Unternehmen, sich zunehmend in Innovation aktiv zu engagieren (Weiblen and Chesbrough in California Management Review 57(2): 66–90, 2015). Um Einblicke in die Innovationsaktivitäten von Unternehmen zu erhalten, entwickelten wir für ein multinationales Finanzdienstleistungsunternehmen in Deutschland ein Intrapreneurship-Modell. Eine erfolgreiche Implementierung erfordert, dass der einzelne Mitarbeiter die Möglichkeit hat, als Unternehmer im eigenen Unternehmen (d. h. als ,,Intrapreneure“) zu agieren. Für die Anwendung und genauere Analyse von Intrapreneurship wurde dieses Model im Rahmen des Aktionsforschungsprojektes implementiert und angewendet. Das untersuchte Unternehmen veranstaltete einen Innovationswettbewerb namens ,,Appathon“, bei dem konkurrierende Teams App-Prototypen entwickelten. Das Gewinnerteam erhielt entsprechende Mittel für die Weiterentwicklung dieser App. Das Ziel der Untersuchung und Analyse von Intrapreneurship besteht darin, Unternehmen bei der Entwicklung einer Start-up-Kultur zu helfen und somit unternehmerische und individuelle Innovationen zu ermöglichen. Unsere Beobachtungen und Ergebnisse stellen die Herausforderungen und Möglichkeiten dar, die eine entsprechende Entwicklung von Routinen für ein aktives und hybrides high-involvement Innovationsmanagement mit sich bringt (Bessant in High involvement innovation, 2003).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my special thanks to Joris Hensen and his team, who is the innovation manager, founder, and co-lead of Deutsche Bank API Program, and to Dr. Antje Gonera, who is responsible for the Innovation Research Program (NFR 262303) at NOFIMA AS. In addition, a special thanks goes to Professor John Bessant (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) at University of Exeter, UK.

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  1. Innovation Research, Division Food Science, NOFIMA AS, PO Box 210, Ås, 1431, Norway

    Katja-Maria Prexl

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Correspondence to Katja-Maria Prexl.

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A first draft of findings reported in this article were originally presented at the ISPIM Innovation Conference 2016, Porto (Portugal) by Joris Hensen and Katja-Maria Prexl. A former version of this article is part of the Doctoral Thesis of Katja-Maria Prexl: Prexl, K.-M. (2018). Contextualization of individual absorptive capacity: Exloring corporate engagement activities in innovation and the empirical evidence of individual capabilities for new knowledge and innovation (Doctoral Thesis, Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany).

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Prexl, KM. The intrapreneurship reactor: how to enable a start-up culture in corporations. Elektrotech. Inftech. 136, 234–240 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00502-019-0727-7

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