Search

Prior research has proposed five conditions that support corporate entrepreneurship: rewards, management support, resources including time, organizational structures (at the macro level), and risk acceptance. This article investigates the sufficiency of these conditions in motivating individual scientists or engineers who have created and commercialized multiple breakthrough innovations in mature corporations—or technical corporate entrepreneurs. Using in-depth interviews with technical corporate entrepreneurs and human resource managers, we explore both how they are motivated and whether there is concurrence between how they say they are motivated and how their human resource managers perceive that they are motivated. We find the framework applicable but incomplete relative to motivating these individuals. The additional dimensions of appropriate work design (at the micro level) and their intrinsic motivation to innovate need to be considered in supporting technical corporate entrepreneurship. Further, we find that an important disparity exists between what technical corporate entrepreneurs say motivates them and the perceptions of their human resource manger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have been performed previously to investigate different theories of motivation and, more specifically, how to motivate technical professionals. The problem with these studies is that they consider groups of scientists, engineers, or technical professionals as a whole or ‘on average,’ despite the fact that not all technical professionals are the same. One particular set of individuals—technical visionaries—is a key driver of technical innovation and new product development within technology- intensive organizations. While the literature intimates the existence of these highly innovative individuals in industry, technical visionaries have not been investigated in a systematic manner. Through in-depth interviews with 24 technical visionaries, identified as such by managers in their firms, this study identifies what methods are used in industry to motivate these exceptional individuals, what works and what does not. Our results show that technical visionaries are first and foremost motivated by internal factors, including the desire to see their ideas become a reality, and enjoying working ‘on-the-edge,’ and innovating. While many aspects of standard incentives and reward systems used to motivate technical professionals in general are also motivating for technical visionaries, these results indicate that they are motivated by additional factors not generally discussed in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]