Digital Corporate Entrepreneurship: How Digital Technologies Are

Reshaping Entrepreneurship in Incumbents

Stefano D’Angelo, Antonio Ghezzi, Angelo Cavallo, Andrea Rangone and Maria Gatti

Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship, Digital Transformation, Lean Startup, Business Model, Business Model

Innovation.

Abstract: Digital technologies make new opportunities possible for entrepreneurship in incumbent organizations while

making some of the older practices obsolete, thereby generating potential disruption for established firms.

The digital entrepreneurship research field elucidates the potential implications of digital technologies for

entrepreneurship. Despite its contemporary significance, however, existing research has largely neglected the

role of digital technologies in corporate entrepreneurship, i.e., entrepreneurship in incumbent organizations.

Through an exploratory multiple case study, our study helps to address this gap by providing a framework

shading light on how incumbents can leverage the enabling role of digital technologies at organizational level

(i.e., increasing the number and heterogeneity of inputs; increasing visibility of actors and resources involved

in the project management) and project level (i.e., increasing innovations’ adoption rate in an existing

corporate environment while managing their structural barriers. Based on the findings of this study, we

contribute to corporate entrepreneurship research and practice.

1 INTRODUCTION

Digital technologies – e.g. cloud, artificial

intelligence and 3-D printing – are amazing. It is

acknowledged that digital technologies are

significantly transforming entrepreneurial processes

and outcomes (Nambisan et al., 2019; Autio et al.,

2018; Nambisan, 2017). Specifically, digital

technologies have upended two broad assumptions

that underlie our extant understanding of

entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. First, they

have rendered entrepreneurial outcomes and

processes less bounded (Elia et al., 2020; Nambisan,

2017). Second, they have led to less predefinition in

the locus of entrepreneurial agency (Berger et al.,

2021; Nambisan, 2017). However, despite the huge

proliferation and potential of digital technologies,

existing literature has largely neglected the role of

digital technologies in corporate entrepreneurship,

i.e., entrepreneurship in incumbent organizations

(Petzsche et al., 2022; Arvidsson and Mønsted, 2018;

Burgelman, 1983). The rapid development of digital

technologies urges scholars to reconsider and update

the antecedents, processes, and outcomes associated

with traditional corporate entrepreneurship (Murtinu

et al., 2022). To answer this call, we explored the role

of digital technologies in facilitating corporate

entrepreneurship practices through an exploratory

multiple-case study (Yin, 1984) involving four

incumbent organizations implementing corporate

entrepreneurship activities with digital technologies.

The outcome of this study is a framework that

illustrates how incumbents can leverage the enabling

role of digital technologies for corporate

entrepreneurship at organizational and project level.

In doing so, our paper contributes to the research

stream of corporate entrepreneurship and digital

technologies discussing the potential, applications,

and managerial implications of digital technologies in

corporate entrepreneurship activities. The paper

contributes to digital corporate entrepreneurship

research by studying the organizational and process

levers that management can adopt to foster corporate

entrepreneurship through digital technologies.

Specifically, we seek to make two main contributions

to research and practice in corporate entrepreneurship

in the digital age. First, we shed light on how digital

technologies enable corporate entrepreneurship at

organizational and project levels. Second, we extend

the concept of digital technologies as enablers as

evidenced in digital entrepreneurship literature (von

Briel et al., 2018) also in the corporate context.

514

D’Angelo, S., Ghezzi, A., Cavallo, A., Rangone, A. and Gatti, M.

Digital Corporate Entrepreneurship: How Digital Technologies Are Reshaping Entrepreneurship in Incumbents.

DOI: 10.5220/0011827900003467

In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2023) - Volume 2, pages 514-521

ISBN: 978-989-758-648-4; ISSN: 2184-4992

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Corporate Entrepreneurship

In a dynamic and uncertain environment such as that

created by digital transformation, corporate

entrepreneurship is envisioned as a process that can

facilitate firms’ efforts to innovate constantly and

cope effectively with the competitive realities

companies currently face (Fisher et al., 2021; Tucci et

al., 2018). Corporate entrepreneurship, or

entrepreneurship in incumbent organizations, has

been a topic of interest to scholars and practitioners

for over the last four decades (Urbano et al., 2022;

Burgelman, 1983). In the digital age, (corporate)

entrepreneurship is now more in demand than ever

before and digital technologies can make corporate

entrepreneurship increasingly potent and prolific

(Arvidsson and Mønsted, 2018). Although the body

of research on corporate entrepreneurship has

expanded and aroused an increasing amount of

attention along the years and given the pervasiveness

of the digital technologies, the profound impact of

digital technologies on corporate entrepreneurship

has yet to be addressed.

2.2 Digital Corporate

Entrepreneurship

Digital technologies herald a new era in

entrepreneurship, one in which the traditional ways

and forms of pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities

are increasingly reframed (Nambisan, 2017).

Nambisan (2017) discusses the impact of digital

technologies on entrepreneurship process and

outcome. And more, Nambisan and colleagues (2019)

shade lights on three themes that could potentially

serve as the basis for future research on

entrepreneurship with digital technologies, i.e.,

openness, affordances, and generativity. Recently,

digital technologies have attracted a growing interest

also in corporate context (Ben Arfi and Hikkerova,

2021; D’Angelo et al., 2021; Cavallo et al., 2020;

Joshi et al., 2019). Scholars are increasingly

considering digital technologies as key differentiating

factors for corporations to operate in the dynamic

digital context. For instance, Arvidsson and Mønsted

(2018) highlight how the large diffusion of digital

technologies can make corporate entrepreneurship

activities more potent and prolific. However, despite

the pervasiveness and the potential of digital

technologies, literature provides limited empirical

evidence on how digital technologies can support and

enable corporate entrepreneurship (Ghosh et al.,

2021; Ben Arfi, and Hikkerova, 2021; Soltanifar et

al., 2021). For instance, Martin-Rojas and colleagues

(2020) analyse the application of social media

platforms for corporate entrepreneurship, Ghosh and

colleagues (2021) discuss cloud technology in

corporate entrepreneurship while Pinchot and

Soltanifar (2021) study internet of things for

entrepreneurship in corporations. However, we found

very few contributions that study empirically digital

technologies in corporate entrepreneurship.

Accordingly, the role of digital technologies in

corporate entrepreneurship remain largely

underexplored. Thus, the aim of this paper is to bridge

this gap in existing literature and answer the

following research question: “How can digital

technologies support corporate entrepreneurship?”

3 METHODOLOGY

To answer our research question, our study is based

on an exploratory multiple case study (Ghezzi and

Cavallo, 2020; Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1984). Case

sampling was performed theoretically (Meredith,

1998), and following our interpretive stance.

Specifically, as practitioners have limited guidelines

to foster digital corporate entrepreneurship in

incumbent organizations operating in traditional

industries (Chen, 2021; Soltanifar et al., 2021), we

focused on incumbent organizations operating in

traditional industries. We believe that this sample of

companies adequately fits with the theoretical setting

and, therefore, it is suitable to respond to the research

question proposed as companies are incumbent

organizations operating in heterogenous traditional

sectors and implementing corporate entrepreneurship

activities leveraging on digital technologies. In our

multiple case study, data were collected through

multiple sources of information (Yin, 1984). 20 semi-

structured interviews were the primary source of

information. The interviews lasted between 45 and 70

minutes and performed between March and May

2022. The protocol of the interviews was consistent

with the study's research question: the informants

were asked to describe the corporate entrepreneurship

practices of their organizations as well as the barriers

faced, the benefits and outcomes obtained using

digital technologies in corporate entrepreneurship.

Several secondary sources of evidence and archival

data were also added to supplement the interview

data, including 23 strategic reports, 20 financial

statements, 17 reports, and external documents and

sources – 35 internet pages, 20 articles. This array of

sources led to “data triangulation” essential for

Digital Corporate Entrepreneurship: How Digital Technologies Are Reshaping Entrepreneurship in Incumbents

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qualitative research to be trustworthy and persuasive

(Siggelkow, 2007). Following the suggestions

provided by Yin (2013), for each case study, we first

analyzed the role of each digital technology adopted

in the corporate entrepreneurship activity. Thereafter,

to identify the common patterns of actions and

differences among each case study, a cross-case

comparison was undertaken. Specifically, Company

A is an incumbent firm operating in the energy sector

and oriented to become a “life company”. This

company pursues sustain regeneration, i.e.,

development of new products/services (Covin and

Miles, 1999) leveraging on a platform-based

intrapreneurship program with the goal to collect

internal entrepreneurial ideas from the employees of

the organization. Company B is an IT multinational

company oriented to organizational rejuvenation, i.e.,

the improvement of the organizational functioning of

the organization (Covin and Miles, 1999). In

particular, the company leverages on internal

programs aimed to foster a digital entrepreneurial

mindset culture and improve organizational

processes. Company C is a large enterprise operating

in the insurance sector pursuing strategic renewal,

i.e., the pursuit of a new strategic direction (Covin

and Miles, 1999) to digitalize their business. They

established an “Innovation Community” composed

by 30 internal employees selected from different

departments with the role to create innovative

solutions. Finally, Company D is a manufacturing

company that established an outpost program in Italy,

China, and America aimed to collect ideas from

external stakeholders such as clients, or internal

employees for developing new market opportunities

in a logic of domain redefinition, taking the

competitive battle to a new product-market arena

(Covin and Miles, 1999).

4 FINDINGS

4.1 Company A

Company A adopts an internal web platform to

collect ideas emerged from “Call for Ideas”

intrapreneurship programs, as well as business units

needs. Company A leverages also on platform that

connects the Innovation department with external

actors, e.g., Corporate Venture Capital unit.

Moreover, Company A can leverage on a shared Idea

Knowledge Management (IKM) System that hosts

the development process of the most promising ideas.

To rapidly experiment ideas, Company A adopts

rapid prototyping technology (CAD and 3D printing

technology). These technologies allow to build the

prototype in bootcamp days and present the solutions

to the high-level management for the final evaluation.

The digital technologies helped the company to

perform and enable the following capabilities: (i)

intercept embryonal internal and external ideas; (ii)

contact solver from various background and

geographic locations; (iii) generate further

opportunities for entrepreneurial projects; (iv)

guarantee an alignment among the business needs and

the entrepreneurial resources; (v) improve the

alignment among the business needs and

entrepreneurial resources and (vi) develop a safe

space environment for the employees to innovate.

4.2 Company B

Company B has a space dedicated to experiment ideas

and formed by four main sections: (i) a collaboration

hub dedicated to hackathons and workshops; (ii) a

makerspace with digital tools such as 3D printers, a

laser cutter, a PCB milling machine for creating

prototypes; (iii) a room dedicated to augmented and

virtual reality applications and (iv) a dedicated space

to deep learning techniques. These digital tools allow

Company B employees to experiment and to look at

problems from different perspectives. Company B

leverages on an internal web platform supported by

social media applications to connect employees that

can communicate among each others, join teams, and

share ideas to develop corporate entrepreneurial

projects. Moreover, the company leverages on an

IKM system that collects and monitor established

projects and teams involved in the innovation

programs engaging employees from different

geographical locations. Further, Company uses an

artificial intelligence algorithm that allows to identify

and filters specific innovation projects according to

specific business needs. These digital technologies

help the company to perform and enable the

following capabilities: (i) increase the number of

participants involved in the corporate

entrepreneurship program; (ii) increase the control

and visibility over the process and (iii) facilitate

cross-department collaboration.

4.3 Company C

Company C launched the first community of clients

‘Beta Tester’ to facilitate experimentation. These

activities are made possible through a digital web

platform “Company C collab.it” that connects 22.000

users with the goal of testing the ideas coming from

the intrapreneurship program in a rapid way.

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Company C can leverage also on an Innovation

Community, which involves every year a group of

about thirty employees from various backgrounds and

with different seniority and expertise. The

participants, called explorers, are ambassadors that

devote up to 20% of their working time to develop

new entrepreneurial ideas. Employees, grouped in

teams, meet virtually on collaborative platform where

they follow different entrepreneurial projects from

ideation to prototyping up to piloting. These digital

technologies help the company to perform and

enabled the following capabilities: (i) increase the

efficiency of the entrepreneurial process; (ii) increase

transparency of the resources involved and (iii)

improve the reporting to high-level management.

4.4 Company

Company D adopts a Product Lifetime Management

system (PLM) system for corporate entrepreneurship

projects and a gate-model project management

system for the ongoing projects to the departments,

who can monitor and provide feedbacks through the

platform. The innovation department of Company D

leverages on two main digital tools. First, a PLM

system based on Cloud that hosts the concept of an

idea and support the prototyping phase by collecting

necessary info. This is shared among all the

departments, who can contribute with information

and feedbacks and approve the projects through the

milestones. Second, a cloud-based 3D machine is

used as internal prototyping builder. This 3D machine

permits to pursue mass customization by generating

small batches of personalized caps. Leveraging on the

3D machine, Company D was able to target a new

segment market. Moreover, by testing its offer on a

new e-shop, the company was able to access a higher

volume of costumers also dispersed geographically

who can customize and configure their offer directly

from the web platform. These digital technologies

helped the company to perform and enable the

following capabilities: (i) increase the connection

among departments; (ii) facilitate visibility of the

actors involved in the entrepreneurial process and

(iii) generate stepping stones for future innovations.

5 DISCUSSION

In the following chapter the results are discussed, and

an integrated framework has been proposed

answering to this research question: “How digital

technologies can support corporate

entrepreneurship?”. The framework (Figure 1)

resulted as outcome of our multiple case study.

Overall, independently from the typology of digital

technologies adopted or the corporate

entrepreneurship form analyzed in the cases under

investigation, the framework presents digital

technologies as enablers for corporate

entrepreneurship at organizational and project level

and specifically for these activities: (i) idea inflows;

(ii) monitoring and controlling the progress; and (iii)

the idea testing.

5.1 Digital Technologies as Enablers of

Corporate Entrepreneurship

Our multiple case study

highlights key insights

regarding the role of digital technologies in corporate

entrepreneurship. The first key finding concerns the

role of digital technologies in enabling corporate

entrepreneurship. Our study presents digital

technologies as tools that support the entrepreneurial

activity also in corporate context. For example, the

Figure 1: Research framework.

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517

innovation department of Company A, composed by

ten employees, had not the capacity to manage the

increasing number of incoming entrepreneurial and

innovative ideas. By adopting an IKM system, the

innovation team had the possibility to simultaneous

handle the information of the innovative projects, and

set up an intrapreneurial program involving and

connecting all the employees across the company.

Similarly in Company B, the application of an

internal web platform for hosting the virtual rooms

and virtual prototyping tools, enable the company to

perform a hackathon program involving about 80.000

participants. The possibility to engage this type of

number of participants enable the department to

collect several new ideas for the internal incubator of

the company. Instead, Company D is able to address

a new market and satisfy a completely new target of

customers leveraging on the enabling possibilities

offered by the 3D printing technology and web

platforms. As a result, the concept of digital

technologies as enablers for corporate

entrepreneurship is line with the positive view present

in entrepreneurship literature (Von Briel et al., 2018).

Specifically, independently from the sector under

investigation, the selected companies adopted digital

technologies as enablers of three main activities of the

entrepreneurial process inside corporations: (i) ideas

inflows; (ii) monitoring and controlling the process;

and (iii) idea testing activity. These phases emerged

from the cases can be also related with the three

phases “recognition of opportunity”, “appropriation

of opportunity” and “exploitation of opportunity”

evidenced by the dynamic capabilities theory (Teece,

2007). More specifically, we identify three main

enabling effects enabled by digital technologies: (i)

increasing the number and heterogeneity of inputs;

(ii) increasing visibility of actors and resources

involved in the project management, and (iii)

increasing innovations’ adoption rate in existing

corporate environment. Finally, to introduce the

digital technologies in corporate entrepreneurship

practices, companies should implement activities also

at process level. Specifically, we identify two main

implications at process level: (i) the redefinition of

processes and roles of the innovation department; (ii)

the establishment of a digital and entrepreneurial

culture. Based on the above considerations, we

propose the following propositions:

P1: Digital technologies can act as enablers of

corporate entrepreneurship at organizational and

project level.

P2: Digital technologies influence three main

activities of the entrepreneurial process inside

corporations: (i) idea inflows; (ii) monitoring and

controlling the progress; and (iii) idea testing.

5.2 First Enabling Effect: Increasing

the Number and Heterogeneity of

Inputs

By applying digital technologies in the “idea inflows”

activity incumbents can increase the number and

heterogeneity of inputs for new idea generation

creating value for the organization. In other words,

digital technologies allow to increase the alertness of

the company to internal and external environment

changes, thus facilitating firms to reduce costs in

collecting internal and external ideas and inputs (for

example by facilitating ideas gathering and improve

problem solving by proposing ad-hoc challenges).

Social media and web platforms emerged as the

suitable digital technologies for this first enabling

effect. Specifically, Company A adopts an internal

web platform for scouting internal employees’ ideas

from internal departments from the business to the

operations areas, to intercept embryonal business

opportunities and include them in corporate venturing

programs, as well as to interact with more than 20.000

experts coming from various backgrounds and

locations. By including social media applications in

the internal platform, Company B allows employees

and stakeholders worldwide to interact and work

together, for instance by autonomously create news

teams, and propose continuously new solutions and

enrich existing ideas with comments and feedbacks.

This first enabling effect of digital technologies in

corporate entrepreneurship is related to the nature and

degree of openness, facilitated by digital technologies

in corporate entrepreneurship—in terms of who can

participate (actors), what they can contribute (inputs),

how they can contribute (process), and to what ends

(outcomes)(Nambisan et al., 2019, p.3). More

specifically, this enabling capability generate various

secondary effects for corporate entrepreneurship.

First, it contributes to boost a digital entrepreneurial

culture within the organization and mitigate middle

managers "myopy" (Braganza et al., 2009) and risk

aversion towards the “new”. Second, it allows the

organization to acquire a depth understanding of the

external environment and at the same time increasing

their alertness to internal and external environment

changes. This allows also to reduce costs in collecting

ideas and inputs by facilitating ideas inflows.

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5.3 Second Enabling Effect: Increasing

Visibility of Actors and Resources

Involved in the Project

Management

By applying digital technologies in “monitoring and

controlling progress” activity, incumbents can

increase visibility of actors and resources involved in

the project management providing organizational

benefits. In particular, this allows to reduce

complexity and coordination costs of handling

resources and capabilities involved in the innovative

projects and thus supporting the decision making of

management on corporate entrepreneurship activities.

IKM, PLM systems, CID tools, AI, and ML

technology emerged as the suitable digital

technologies for this second enabling effect.

Specifically, Company B adopts an AI algorithm that

searches in a database the current entrepreneurial and

corporate innovative projects and filter them

according to specific company requirements. The

company uses this tool to prioritize the ideas and

develop concepts aligned with business current needs.

For example, Company B was in search for solutions

to improve their presence on social media market.

Supported by the AI algorithm, the company selected

ten worldwide most suitable idea applications, and

started their development. Finally, one of these

solutions was then commercialized and became part

of the value proposition of Company B. While

Company C designs, maps, and visualizes the

entrepreneurial process of its concepts through CID

tools to plan and control their advancement. This

second enabling effect can be related to the concept

of affordances, defined as the action potential or

possibilities offered by digital technology in relation

to corporate entrepreneurship (Nambisan et al., 2019,

p.3). This second enabling effect provided by digital

technologies create various secondary effects for

corporate entrepreneurship in incumbent

organizations. First, it allows to reduce complexity

and coordination costs to manage heterogeneous

actors and ideas involved in corporate

entrepreneurship activities. Second, it supports the

decision making of management providing a

comprehensive and interacting guidelines suitable for

corporate entrepreneurship and innovation projects in

digital context (Ghosh et al., 2021). Third, it allows

to measure and control existing resources, therefore

providing practical insights to high-level

management and aligning them concerning the

development of their entrepreneurial activities.

Fourth, by adopting collaborative digital tools opened

to all corporate departments, it is possible to increase

the engagement of employees in corporate

entrepreneurship activities in organizations.

5.4 Third Enabling Effect: Increasing

Innovations’ Adoption Rate in

Existing Corporate Environment

By applying digital technologies in the “idea testing”

activity incumbents can accelerate corporate

innovation adoption rate in corporate environment,

and thus providing benefits also at project-level.

Specifically, this third enabling effect allows the

company to make the entrepreneurial process faster

and thus increasing the customer-acceptance of

innovations outcome. CAD tools, 3D printing, and

Web platforms emerged as the suitable digital

technologies for this third enabling effect.

For example, Company A adopts rapid prototyping

systems to finalize in few weeks the ideas reaching

the testing phase and propose the prototypes to the top

management for the final decision. Company C

instead adopts a web platform involving internal and

external users that provides continuous and rapid

feedbacks on weekly base on projects uploaded by the

innovation team. This third enabling effect is related

to the notion of generativity, defined as the capacity

exhibited by digital technologies to produce

unprompted change (through ‘blending’ or

recombination) by large, varied, unrelated,

unaccredited and uncoordinated entities/actors

(Nambisan et. al., 2019, p.3). This third enabling

effect provided by digital technologies generates

various secondary effects for corporate

entrepreneurship in incumbent organizations. First, it

enables the company to speed up experimentation and

testing process, while reducing costs in terms of

prototyping, feasibility analysis, evaluation, and

customer acceptance. Second, it improves

experimentation process also in term of time reducing

the experimentation cycle in incumbent organizations

(Damanpour and Wischnevsky, 2006). However, it is

necessary to consider the investments and skills

required to adopt digital technologies such as CAD

software and generate the required output.

6 CONCLUSION

Our study contributes to the debate on corporate

entrepreneurship in the digital era in many aspects.

First, this study confirms the view of digital

technologies as enablers of entrepreneurship (Von

Briel et al., 2018) also in the corporate context. More

Digital Corporate Entrepreneurship: How Digital Technologies Are Reshaping Entrepreneurship in Incumbents

519

specifically, this study highlights how digital

technologies enable corporate entrepreneurship at the

organizational and project levels. In particular, we

shed light on digital technologies as enablers for

corporate entrepreneurship for these activities: (i)

idea inflows; (ii) monitoring and controlling the

progress; and (iii) idea testing. In detail, by applying

digital technologies in the “idea inflows” activity,

incumbents can increase the number and

heterogeneity of inputs for new idea generation

creating value for the organization. By applying

digital technologies in “monitoring and controlling

progress” activity, incumbents can increase the

visibility of actors and resources involved in the

project management providing organizational

benefits. By applying digital technologies in the “idea

testing” activity, incumbents can accelerate corporate

innovation adoption rate in the corporate

environment, thus providing benefits also at the

project-level. Second, our research revises the

concepts of openness, affordances, and generativity

(Nambisan et al., 2019) in the corporate

entrepreneurship context. From a managerial

perspective, we believe the paper provides managers,

executives, and practitioners operating in the field of

corporate entrepreneurship and digital technologies

with a set of tools, insights and examples. For

instance, to successfully introduce digital

technologies in corporate entrepreneurship, we

suggest incumbent organizations perform the

following activities: (i) the redefinition of processes

and roles of the innovation department; (ii) the

establishment of a digital and entrepreneurial culture.

This finding is confirmed also by Ghosh and

colleagues (2021) that highlight the need to develop a

cultural transformation towards a digital operating

model to favor digital corporate entrepreneurship.

However, the implementation of digital technologies

in corporate entrepreneurship can generate tensions

and barriers such as the update of established

corporate resources tools (i.e., Company C moving to

the cloud technology has caused a needed change in

30 years old coding that generates internal resistance

and mistrust) or cultural tensions in terms of skills and

capabilities (i.e., digital technologies can create

internal divides in term of different entrepreneurial

attitude and digital competences). Despite the

possibilities offered by digital technologies, the

downside of digital technologies is a topic that

deserves further attention. Finally, this research is not

excepted from limitations. Our framework represents

a foundation for future studies on corporate

entrepreneurship in the digital age. Based on the

framework proposed, future research could

investigate more in-depth the relationship between

specific digital technologies and enabling effects for

corporate entrepreneurship. For example, an in-depth

analysis of the use and implementation of a specific

digital technology in a specific phase of corporate

entrepreneurship in a specific sector of activity is

required. Moreover, future studies can analyze the

enabling effects of digital technologies according to

the maturity of the digital technologies (Gerals, 2003)

or the corporate entrepreneurship form investigated

(Covin and Miles, 1999).

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