March 2020
Technical Note
HBS Case Collection

Intrapreneurship: Leading Innovation Efforts in Established Organizations

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:6

Abstract

“Intrapreneurship” is the use of entrepreneurial management techniques within established companies to create new environments that foster innovation. Mature firms have consistently faced risk of elimination from competitors, shifting consumer preferences, and disruptive innovations. That threat has intensified enormously over the past several decades with the emergence of new technologies with sweeping relevance to business practices, increasing the pressure to innovate or perish. Entrepreneurial managers in charge of innovation must ask themselves: What are you trying to achieve? Is your company confronting a specific strategic challenge? Is innovation core to your firm’s mission? Or do you simply want the firm to be open to new ideas and be more innovative? How integrated with the company do you want the innovation effort to be? In this note, we focus on the innovations that are core to the firm and pose real threats to its future, and provide a framework for how to structure innovation efforts in more traditional organizations.