Corporate Entrepreneurship: State‐of‐the‐Art Research and a Future Research Agenda

anagers and management scholars havetraditionally embraced the premise thatsustainable competitive advantage must bedeveloped by firms to achieve and perpetuate competitivesuperiority. The validity of the notion that competitiveadvantages are sustainable began to be questionedtoward the end of the 20th century as the dual forces oftechnological change and globalization heightened com-petition and eroded bases—sometimes long-establishedbases—for competitive superiority (Bettis and Hitt,1995). Innovation began to be regarded as inherent toeffective management practice, and the premise that com-petitive advantage must be renewed replaced the premisethat competitive advantage is sustainable. The recognizedneed for renewal led managers and management scholarsto consider how entrepreneurial processes might beenacted within established organizations for the purposesof achieving and perpetuating competitive superiority(Covin and Slevin, 2002). Thus, an interest in corporateentrepreneurship (CE) was born. CE seeks to renewestablished organizations, thereby facilitating theirviability and competitiveness through the utilization ofvarious innovation-based initiatives.The recognized scope of the CE domain has expandedsignificantly over the past few decades. Early CE scholars(e.g., Hill and Hlavacek, 1972; Peterson and Berger,1971) often adopted somewhat ambiguous views of thedomain of CE in the sense that what was consideredentrepreneurial about the phenomenon under investiga-tion was either not explicitly defined or was not differen-tiated from other phenomena commonly associated withinnovation in organizations (e.g., new product develop-ment). Guth and Ginsberg’s (1990) insights added neededclarity to the matter of the CE domain by advocating thatCE be viewed as encompassing two categories of phe-nomena: corporate venturing, which entails “the birth ofnew businesses within existing organizations” (p. 5) andstrategic renewal, which entails “the transformation oforganizations through renewal of the key ideas on whichthey are built” (p. 5). Sharma and Chrisman (1999, p. 18)subsequently defined CE as “the process whereby anindividual or group of individuals, in association with anexisting organization, create a new organization or insti-gate renewal or innovation within that organization.”Similar to Guth and Ginsberg (1990), in Sharma andChrisman’s (1999) typology, CE includes both corporateventuring and strategic renewal, but innovation “of theSchumpeter (1934) variety” is also recognized, i.e., “theintroduction of an original invention or idea into a com-mercially usable form that is new to the marketplace andhas the potential to transform the competitive environ-ment as well as the organization” (p. 19).The most recent conceptualizations of CE have furtherexpanded its scope. Morris, Kuratko, and Covin (2011)and Phan, Wright, Ucbasaran, and Tan (2009) proposetwo categories of phenomena as representing the domainof CE: corporate venturing and strategic entrepreneur-ship. While the label corporate venturing is used in ref-erence to the same new business phenomena alluded to inprior typologies, the strategic entrepreneurship categoryof CE refers to a wide variety of specific phenomena thatinclude, among others, strategic renewal and the Schum-peterian (disruptive) innovation phenomenon to whichSharma and Chrisman (1999) refer. Additionally, strate-gic entrepreneurship as part of the CE construct recog-nizes not only the disruptive aspect of Schumpeterianinnovation, but also the generative, path creating, newbusiness creation aspect that may be inherent in break-through innovation, where firms struggle to understandhow to execute opportunities in the face of high levels ofuncertainty on multiple dimensions (O’Connor and Rice,forthcoming). In particular, the strategic entrepreneurshipcategory of CE includes a broad array of entrepreneurialinitiatives that do not necessarily involve new businessesbeing added to the corporation. The recognized formsof strategic entrepreneurship—strategic renewal, sus-tained regeneration, domain redefinition, organizational

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