A classification of the corporate entrepreneurship umbrella: labels and perspectives

The concept of corporate entrepreneurship has been confusingly used by researchers to explain various organisational phenomena such as ways of managing, strategy and innovation. The abundant use of labels and perspectives interchangeably has consequently led to lack of clarity. This article reviews the literature in order to provide an overview and categorisation of corporate entrepreneurship. The aim is to clarify the concept by identifying the key perspectives. Since there is no unifying theoretical base for the entrepreneurship phenomena – due to, for example, its interdisciplinary grounding in economics, sociology and psychology – a framework for corporate entrepreneurship is developed, consisting of intrapreneurship and exopreneurship. These are further broken down into four complementary perspectives: corporate venturing, internal resources, internationalisation and external networks. It is hoped that, these four perspectives together will give the reader a clearer understanding of corporate entrepreneurship and thereby improve the basis for managerial decisions.

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