ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship is often associated with the creation of new ventures by individual entrepreneurs. But entrepreneurship has also been vividly discussed in the context of established companies, normally under the label ‘corporate entrepreneurship’ (Dess et al., 2003; Phan, Wright, Ucbasaran, & Tan, 2009). Entrepreneurship in a corporate context is often related to a particular way of running a company, characterized by a focus on, e.g. creativity, opportunity-seeking, and risk-taking (Meyer & Heppard, 2000a). It is suggested that such an entrepreneurial approach leads to innovations and thereby creates competitive advantage and improves the performance of the company (Covin & Miles, 1999; Ireland, Covin, & Kuratko, 2009). Consequently, managers within many large companies strive to create entrepreneurial ways of running the company, whereas managers in emerging and growing companies strive to preserve entrepreneurship (Meyer & Heppard, 2000a; see also Stevenson & Jarillo-Mossi, 1986).
