ANTECEDENTS, ELEMENTS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY R. DUANE IRELAND Robins School of Business University of Richmond Richmond, VA 23173 DONALD F. KURATKO Ball State University JEFFREY G. COVIN Indiana University THE CONCEPT OF CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) strategy is increasingly recognized as a strategic option firms choose to pursue once triggers from the external environment denote the need for change and strategic adaptation (Kuratko, Ireland & Hornsby, 2001). We define CE strategy as a set of commitments and actions framed around entrepreneurial behavior and processes that the firm designs and uses to develop current and future competitive advantages in promising technological or product-market arenas. The choice of using CE strategy as a primary means of strategic adaptation reflects the firm’s decision to seek competitive advantage principally through innovation and entrepreneurial behavior on a sustained basis. CE strategy is a fundamental orientation toward the pursuit of opportunity and growth that exists when it is embraced throughout the organization and defines the essence of the firm’s functioning. Consistent with Mintzberg’s (1987) “strategy as perspective” view of strategy, CE strategy is a shared ideology that has more to do with “commitments to ways of acting and responding” than with the firm’s specific position within its external environment. Thus, CE strategy is not to be “found” at one level or place within the organization. Rather, it is reflected across the organization and ingrained as part of its core being, and holds across time. A MODEL OF CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY Our model of CE strategy (see Figure 1) has induced and autonomous (Burgelman, 1983) elements. Top-level managers establish an entrepreneurial strategic vision and guide the emergence of a pro-entrepreneurship organizational architecture. Thus, top-level managers purposefully shape the strategic context of entrepreneurial initiatives (Lovas & Ghoshal, 2000), and oversee, nurture, and support attempts to use entrepreneurial behavior as the foundation for product, process, and administrative innovations (Heller, 1999). Middle- and first-level managers are responsible for executing induced entrepreneurial initiatives and instigating autonomous entrepreneurial initiatives. Thus, in our model of CE strategy, managers at all organizational levels operate as innovators and as part of the overall entrepreneurial process. ------------------------------- Insert Figure 1 about here. ------------------------------- Academy of Management Best Conference Paper 2003 ENT: L1 Table of Contents Best Paper Index Find (Cntl-F)