384 ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Nall sectors of today’s global economy, large corporations are developing new
products and services and creating innovative technologies and systems. When
these creations are closely related to existing products or services, they take the
form of line extensions, brand extensions, and related-product development. This is not
what we mean by intrapreneurship in the corporate setting. Brand proliferation and
“line extensions can make a lot of money, but Honey Nut Cheerios and Diet Cherry
Coke are probably not the path to world economic leadership.”^1 As the introductory
quote indicates, it is the innovative and novel corporate initiatives that make and break
reputations—of companies and of the corporate executives and managers who imple-
ment the innovations. The types of innovations discussed in this chapter are discontinu-
ities. They represent a break from the past. The break can take many forms, from tech-
nological leapfrogging to products targeted at nonconsumers. These products and serv-
ices are aimed at doing things differently, not simply better.
Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked the customers what they really wanted, they’d
have said a faster horse.” These are words of wisdom. Ford is saying that current cus-
tomers want better versions of what they are already buying, but supplying that demand
is not going to produce breakthrough innovations and open new markets. Current cus-
tomers are seldom the source of ideas for new businesses. Their focus is on the current
business, which suggests that one of business’s most relied-upon sources of market
research—asking customers—has little value for corporate venturing.
Intrapreneurshipcan be defined as the development, within a large corporation, of
internal markets and relatively small autonomous or semiautonomous business units
that produce products, services, or technologies by employing the firm’s resources in a
unique way.^2 If technological innovations are natural extensions of contemporary scien-
tific development and if they are used to solve old problems more effectively or efficient-
ly, this is not intrapreneurship. Innovations and incremental changes are important to
corporate success, but they are not part of the intrapreneurship phenomenon.^3 In fact,
as shown below in regard to the dilemmas facing corporate intrapreneurs, incremental
changes and small innovations are enemies of major intrapreneurial developments.
This chapter will cover only the basics of intrapreneurship. The topic is very broad and
more in-depth treatments are available,^4 so this chapter will begin by defining the phe-
nomenon and explaining both why corporations need to be intrapreneurial and how cor-
porate venturing is both similar to and different from independent entrepreneurship. It
then examines some basic processes of intrapreneurship with special emphasis on idea
generation and presents some concepts introduced in Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma
(1999) to demonstrate why corporate executives find it so difficult to initiate internal cor-
porate ventures. Discussion of other barriers to intrapreneurship is followed by a section
on intrapreneurial strategies based on Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy(2005).
The chapter concludes with a set of guidelines for success—actually multiple sets of
guidelines since there is no single consensus on how to make corporate venturing work.INTRAPRENEURSHIP
Intrapreneurship produces something new for the corporation and represents, in its
fullest manifestations, a complete break with the past. Intrapreneurship gives the man-I