Corporate Entrepreneurship: Towards an Understanding of the Importance of Radical Innovation in Knowledge Intensive Firms

Corporate entrepreneurship is often highlighted as being more relevant than ever, as a viable means for existing organizations to pursue creative new solutions to the complex challenges facing firms today. This includes continuously exploring and exploiting previously unexploited opportunities, and thereby moving the organization to a new state of being. In spite of a general consensus on a strong interlinkage between the concepts of innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, the nature of this linkage is rarely addressed directly. This has made further research in the two areas problematic, mainly due to a general lack of consensus surrounding an agreed upon meaning of both concepts and the key internal factors that stimulate the respective processes. Focusing on this problematic aspect, the two-fold aim of the present research study is to:

- Contribute to an understanding of the complementary nature of corporate entrepreneurship and innovation by exploring the role played by innovation in corporate entrepreneurship.

- Develop a framework of corporate entrepreneurial innovation which facilitates an understanding of challenges related hereto and practices applied to overcome these challenges.

The thesis contribution hereto is organized in three main areas:

- Development of conceptual propositions on how the field of corporate entrepreneurship gains from applying specific considerations on innovation. These propositions are joined under the term Radical Innovation, and it is concluded that from a theoretical point of view this is the relevant perspective in which to view corporate entrepreneurship.

- Targeted empirical research on this relationship, demonstrating and discussing the importance of Corporate Entrepreneurial Innovation, Strategic Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurial Knowledge Management

- Identification and empirical analysis of organizational practices supportive of creation of corporate entrepreneurial innovation. This is developed into a frame for a more detailed understanding of management hereof.

The results of the research study hence take an important step towards linking corporate entrepreneurship and innovation, and identifying management practices supportive of these particular innovation processes.