Page - 229 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

leaders and teams and their sponsors) and the ways corporations could encourage intrapreneuring, most studies on intrapreneurship and the often interchangeably used term ‘corporate entrepreneurship’ have focussed on organisations and not individuals (Soltanifar 2016). Moreover, throughout the past decade, studies on intrapreneurshipor corporate entrepreneurshiphavebeendominatedbyanalysesof firm-level contributions, that is, the instances where firms acted as entrepreneurs (e.g. Lumpkin et al. 2009; Rauch et al. 2009), with only a few exploring the individual-level or team-level perspectives.1 Until now, no studies had expressly modelled the individuals’ intrapreneurial behaviour within the context of digital intrapreneurship. 2.2 Intrapreneurial Roles andBehaviour inOrganisations Pinchot and Pellman (1999) recognise five distinct roles that are essential for managing innovation: (1) an idea generator, or an inventor, (2) an intrapreneur, (3) an intrapreneurial teammember, (4) a sponsor, and (5) an innovation climate maker.Althoughallfive roles need to coexist to result in successful innovation, the permitted space,unfortunately, doesnot allowus todiscussall of them; thus, in this chapter, we focus solely on the roles of the intrapreneur and the sponsor and their contributions to digital intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurial activities range from large interventions, such as creating new business ventures and changing the strategic direction of a company, to smaller changes, such as developing new products, services, and technologies and improvingexistingproducts andprocesses. Intrapreneurs, like entrepreneurs, prefer to act without having to prove that their attempts will necessarily be a success (Pinchot andPellman1999). Instead, theywant tofindoutwhatwillwork through a series of experiments, learning scenarios, and redesigns. They are prepared to encounter obstacles and setbacks, learn from them, and adjust their initial assumptions according to any new information. Intrapreneurs operate across the boundaries of organisational units,which is often necessary, sincemanynew ideas require changes inmore than one aspect (Pinchot 1985). Intrapreneurs’ anticipatory behaviour aimed at creating, and later implementing, new ideas for their organisation increases its capacity to respond to new opportu- nities and external developments (e.g. Gawke et al. 2017). According to Deloitte (2015), this action-oriented intrapreneurial behaviour is often combined with a strongbusiness focus anda relationship-building skill set, enabling intrapreneurs to activelysell their ideaswithin theircorporationsandthusdrive their implementation. Without suchskills, intrapreneursmight lack internal sponsorshipand, regardlessof their creative spirit and vision, fail to convincemanagement to let them proceed. Intrapreneurs operatewithin their respective companies and are thus acutely aware that theywill never act as independently as entrepreneurs (Deloitte 2015). 1For exceptions, see Covin et al. (2020), Hughes et al. (2018), Kraus et al. (2019),Marvel et al. (2007),Monsen et al. (2010),Mustafa et al. (2018). 236 G. Pinchot III andM. Soltanifar