Intrapreneurship: A conceptual model and its dimensions

Abstract

The present paper objective is to develop a conceptual model of intrapreneurship, or as it is also known, corporate entrepreneurship (CE). The intrapreneurship, through the encouragement of innovation in big companies, can represent both a competitive advantage and also the survival of a company nowadays. For being a current theme, intrapreneurship had its aspects explored more by the authors in recent years, however there are no conceptual standards designed and disseminated that can help to have a general view of the subject. Based on the assumption that intrapreneurship can be grounded on pillars of various themes, the main and more important dimensions found in the literature were gathered. These dimensions, such as innovation capacity, risk taking, resources, among others, are considered essential for corporate entrepreneurship. This paper proposes to discuss each one of the nine points raised and integrate them into one model. By the development of the subject, it was possible to obtain a well-grounded model with the key practice points of the intrapreneurship in large corporations. The nine dimensions were clustered in three core pillars (Structure, Management and Agents) in an intersection model, representing the interdependence between them.