Overcoming the Initial Illegitimacy of Ideas

Stephan Eicher

Chapter 12 in Corporate Underground:Bootleg Innovation and Constructive Deviance, 2022, pp 249-268 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This chapter presents how bootleggers uncover their underground projects to their organizations and overcome the initial illegitimacy of their ideas. This study seems to be the first attempt to link bootlegging research with legitimacy research to explain this endeavor.We find that bootleggers just as other innovators need to win legitimacy for their projects. To overcome initial illegitimacy, we find that they follow several known but also several new patterns. Consequently, this chapter expands the knowledge on legitimacy seeking behavior of innovators and closes the research gap of how bootleggers successfully uncover their clandestine projects. Our collection of cases furthermore highlights that managers should listen carefully when being confronted with such projects. Innovations that may appear illegitimate at first can turn into important assets for their firms.

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
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781800612266_0012 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781800612266_0012 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781800612266_0012

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().