Intrapreneurship - Enabling Talent for Innovation

How can human capital be selected and developed in order to stimulate the recognition and pursuit of innovation opportunities in established organizations (intrapreneurship)? Organizations need to become more flexible but also need to invest in talent in order to remain innovative. This necessitates a new mode of cooperation between employers and employees. In this project we will analyse which types of intrapreneurship are prevalent, how intrapreneurship is enabled and constrained by management practices, organizational structures and the context of the organization. This proposal includes three specific projects on intrapreneurship: talent policy, organizational antecedents and consequences, and firm external antecedents and consequences. Talent policy determines the ways in which talented people are recruited, facilitated and governed to develop new business. The organizational antecedents of intrapreneurship involve the structures, cultures, resources, capabilities, and reward systems needed to promote intrapreneurship and to attract, retain, and motivate human capital. We study the effects of intrapreneurship on (radical) innovation and organizational performance. We distinguish these antecedents and effects in established large firms and in young/medium sized firms. The firm-external dimension focuses on the role of national and regional policies, institutions, and culture in enabling and constraining intrapreneurship, and to what extent intrapreneurship (in contrast to independent entrepreneurship) affects the competitiveness of regions and countries. The main contribution of the program is to gain more insights in the antecedents and possible human capital interventions for stimulating intrapreneurship in the top sectors.