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

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.