Market of Makers – How to Promote Corporate Entrepreneurship with an Effectuation Intervention

Abstract

Corporate entrepreneurship is a challenge for organizations and their employees, for example because of structural rigidities or inertia. A promising approach of how to spark corporate entrepreneurship lies in effectuation research. Effectuation is a mode of action or decision-making logic that is based on empirical evidence from expert entrepreneurs. Following a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, we develop and implement an effectuation intervention at a German multinational corporation. The intervention consists of two basic parts: The Market of Makers, an event that leads participants through the effectual process, and the Speedboat Regatta, a 3-months long project development phase. The intervention successfully generated 23 projects that identified opportunities for process innovation. This study contributes to design knowledge, theory and practice. First, we designed a blueprint for similar effectuation interventions and are able to formulate four design principles, which show how voluntariness, playfulness, and constraints enable effectuation and promote corporate entrepreneurship. Second, we contribute to corporate entrepreneurship theory by showing that effectuation is promising for approaching corporate entrepreneurship’s theoretical and empirical problems. Third, we contribute to practice by demonstrating that interventions based on effectuation may shift employees towards leading and engaging with innovative projects.