Capturing Existing Innovation in an Incumbent Firm A Refined Entrepreneurial Methodology

Abstract

During recent years, entrepreneurship is looked differently upon by researchers. Consensus is starting to form that entrepreneurship is not as much a personal trait as it is a methodology (Blank, 2005; Ries, 2011; Furr & Dyer, 2014). Corporations have at the same time discovered that they are facing problems when trying to adapt their organizations to an environment where technological breakthroughs appear at a higher rate than ever before. The answer may be corporate entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurial methods needs to be adapted to incumbent firms to enable them to keep innovating effectively (Furr & Dyer, 2014). Several methodologies have been developed to cater this need (Ries, 2011; Furr & Dyer, 2014) and this study explores how entrepreneurial methods function within incumbent firms and we propose a refined methodology for organizations who want to enter new product markets with existing products. Most companies are supposed to have smart and creative people working for them and sometimes one or more of them will come up with an idea for an existing product which they believe have larger potential than what it is currently used for. This is believed to be an under-researched case in academia, as most entrepreneurial methods assume that the entrepreneur merely has an idea that will solve a specific problem (Blank, 2005; Ries, 2011; Eisenmann, Ries & Dillard, 2011). The study results in two conclusions, partly a framework that is developed by refining existing entrepreneurial methods, and partly how business development teams, using this framework, should work with a level of autonomy from the day-to-day operations. The conclusions build upon already established theories and methods like Customer Development (Blank, 2007; Blank & Dorf, 2012), The Lean Startup (Ries, 2011), Innovator’s Method (Furr & Dyer, 2014), Hypothesis-Driven Entrepreneurship (Eisenmann, Ries & Dillard, 2011), Effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2001a; Sarasvathy, 2001b) and Innovation Units (Burgelman, 1984), and adds three pre-steps to Hypothesis-Driven Entrepreneurship. These steps allow companies to find, explore and develop a business model for an already existing product, i.e. capture existing innovation.