Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2017
  • Chapter
  • The Entrepreneur's Roadmap

Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies

By: William R. Kerr
  • Format:Print
ShareBar

Abstract

Entrepreneurship in large and established companies is vital for their long-term success. Incumbent firms face many challenges ranging from global competition to digitization. In times past, being caught flat-footed might have set a company back several years, but it could recover. Today, the threats are existential in nature, and competition can emerge quickly and from the places one least expects. Successful incumbents must ensure that they do not become self-complacent but instead look to renew themselves through corporate entrepreneurship (sometimes also called intrapreneurship). Many books and articles document the overall importance of corporate entrepreneurship and associated business renewal, and many advisors consider the important perspective of the CEO looking across the whole company. An example is Leading Breakthrough Innovation in Established Companies (Harvard Business School Press), which provides a longer reference set for the CEO and corporate-wide perspective. This chapter uses a different lens—it focuses instead on the perspective of a middle-to-upper-level manager contemplating a potential assignment to lead an internal venture in a large company. Befitting this series, we build lists of important considerations that this manager should evaluate. These lists are not exhaustive, but they offer corporate leaders a starting point for a careful due diligence and action plan around new ventures.

Keywords

Corporate Entrepreneurship

Citation

Kerr, William R. "Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies." Chap. 27 in The Entrepreneur's Roadmap: From Concept to IPO, edited by Tim Dempsey and Bonnie Hyun, 161–164. Chicago, IL: Caxton Business & Legal, Inc., 2017.

About The Author

William R. Kerr

Entrepreneurial Management
→More Publications

More from the Author

    • April 21, 2023
    • Harvard Business Review Digital Articles

    When Scenario Planning Fails

    By: Kalle Heikkinen, William R. Kerr, Mika Malin, Panu Routila and Eemil Rupponen
    • March 2023 (Revised April 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    Independent Governance of Meta’s Social Spaces: The Oversight Board

    By: Jesse M. Shapiro, Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth and William R. Kerr
    • 2023
    • Faculty Research

    Migration Fear and Minority Crowd-Funding Success: Evidence from Kickstarter

    By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug Yorulmaz
More from the Author
  • When Scenario Planning Fails By: Kalle Heikkinen, William R. Kerr, Mika Malin, Panu Routila and Eemil Rupponen
  • Independent Governance of Meta’s Social Spaces: The Oversight Board By: Jesse M. Shapiro, Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth and William R. Kerr
  • Migration Fear and Minority Crowd-Funding Success: Evidence from Kickstarter By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug Yorulmaz
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College