Navigating a Typology of Corporate Entrepreneurial Strategies: The Case of Unilever

Linda Nhu Laursen and Poul Houman Andersen

Chapter 5 in Corporate Underground:Bootleg Innovation and Constructive Deviance, 2022, pp 135-165 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This chapter presents a typology of entrepreneurial strategies. It responds to recent calls in research to examine the theoretical underpinnings of corporate entrepreneurial strategies. The typology explains underlying structural dimensions of how entrepreneurial strategies, such as bootlegging, skunkwork, bricolage, and guided evolution, differ, in respect to the origin of an entrepreneurial initiative and the resource availability for an entrepreneurial initiative. In the chapter, the typology is used to examine an exemplary longitudinal case study at Unilever. The Unilever Knorr case exemplifies how managers in practice navigate different entrepreneurial strategies to overcome the corporate immune system. It finds dynamically evolving situations, where new sources of corporate resistance continually arise, navigating between corporate entrepreneurship modes could be more a viable approach for understanding the mechanisms of corporate entrepreneurial initiatives. As such, this chapter contributes to the understanding of how entrepreneurial strategies are a priori choice and in situ navigation depending on the organizational context and furthers the discussion of important underlying structural dimensions for navigating corporate entrepreneurial strategies.

Keywords: Bootlegging; Creative Deviance; R&D Management; Innovation; Technology Management; Slack Innovation; Underground System; Under-the-Table Work; Informal Corporate Entrepreneurship; Autonomous Initiatives; Underground Innovation; Stealth Innovation; Unsponsored Innovation; Friday-Afternoon Work; Work Behind the Fume Cupboard; Free-Lance Work; Under-the-Counter Work; Pet Project; Discretionary Research; Intrapreneurship; Freewheeling; Illicit Research; Scrounging; Renegades' Work; Recherche Camouflagé; Recherche Caché; Recherche Parallèle; Recherche Libre; Recherche En Perruque; Recherche Sauvage or Recherche Sous-Marine; U-boot Forschung or Graue Projekte (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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