Michael_A._Hitt,_R._Duane_Ireland,_Robert_E._Hosk

426 Part 3: Strategic Actions: Strategy Implementation

manufacturer, and markets the products. In this way, it facilitates many innovations from

inventive new ideas that would be unlikely to find a market without such help. Yet, it,

too, takes much risk and found that it had to do better market research on the ideas and

ensure high quality control of the products produced and marketed. It also has become

more focused, which should allow it to be more efficient and to gain some economies of

scale, which it badly needed.

As shown in Figure 13.1, autonomous and induced strategic behaviors are the two

types of internal corporate venturing. Each venturing type facilitates development of

both incremental and novel innovations. However, a larger number of novel innovations

spring from autonomous strategic behavior, while a larger number of incremental inno-

vations come from induced strategic behavior.

In essence, autonomous strategic behavior results in influences to change aspects of

the firm’s strategy and the structure in place to support its implementation. In contrast,

induced strategic behavior results from the influences of the strategy and structure the

firm currently has in place to support efforts to innovate (see Figure 13.1). These points

are emphasized in the discussions below of the two types of internal corporate venturing.

13-5b Autonomous Strategic Behavior

Autonomous strategic behavior is a bottom-up process in which product champions

pursue new ideas, often through a political process, by means of which they develop

and coordinate the actions required to innovate and to bring the innovation to the

market.^76 Actually, the process used by Quirky, as explained in the Strategic Focus, is an

example of autonomous strategic behavior. A product champion is an individual with

an entrepreneurial mind-set who seeks to create support for developing an innovation.

Product champions play critical roles in moving innovations forward.^77 Commonly, prod-

uct champions use their social capital to develop informal networks within the firm. As

progress is made, these networks become more formal as a means of pushing an innova-

tion to marketplace success.^78 Quirky plays the role of the product champion outside the

bounds of an individual organization. Internal innovations springing from autonomous

strategic behavior differ from the firm’s current strategy and structure, taking it into new

markets and perhaps new ways of creating value.

Figure 13.1 Model of Internal Corporate Venturing

Concept of corporate strategy

Strategic context Structural context

Autonomous

strategic

behavior

Induced

strategic

behavior

Source: Adapted from R. A. Burgelman, 1983, A model of the interactions of strategic behavior, corporate context, and the

concept of strategy, Academy of Management Review, 8:65.