How Technology-based Organizations Successfully Drive Intrapreneurship by Harnessing their Engineers’ Capabilities

Intrapreneurship is a relatively modern research field that is widely recognized as an effective business strategy to influence an intrapreneurial culture and drive innovation within an organization and build a competitive advantage. In today’s complex and rapidly changing business environment, technology organizations, particularly Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), face increasing challenges. They not only have to monitor and keep up with the changes in the technology market, but they also have to find ways to develop successful innovative products and technologies to sustain their position. In such firms, engineers are expected to be experts in the areas of technology, contribute significantly to the innovation process, and bring real values to the marketplace. Hence, technology firms today have engineering roles that go beyond the stereotypical. They expect their engineers to engage actively with intrapreneurship and help work toward the organizational vision and values. Compared to large organizations, SMEs have several limitations. They have to utilize their resources more efficiently, and one of the ways is to tap into their engineers’ intrapreneurial potential. However, in the literature so far, how technology organizations can be more intrapreneurial through their engineers has received very little scholarly attention. It is one of the main research gaps in the fields of intrapreneurship and engineering.
This research addresses these gaps through an exploratory study using a multiple case study methodology to investigate the main organizational factors that harness and nurture engineers’ intrapreneurial capabilities. A sample of four leading and successful technology-based SMEs have been selected from different technological sectors in the UK. These firms are engineering intensive and have successful reputations for introducing innovative products and solutions over the years. A semi-structured interview approach was utilized to collect data from different participants within the organization, including managers from different roles and at different hierarchical levels, as well as engineers at the operation level, thereby providing a more comprehensive perspective of their intrapreneurship activities at the firm level.
The findings show different strategies and approaches followed in the four cases to facilitate intrapreneurship. Different driving factors emerged for each firm based on their distinct setup and characteristics. These factors are mainly clustered under three main groups; developing a supportive culture for intrapreneurship that is integrated and complemented with leadership and management support for intrapreneurial activities and a set of related strategies that are oriented toward developing organizational intrapreneurship. The underlying subfactors include several common aspects but were managed differently and had different importance and focuses in the cases. A list of recommendations has been proposed as a framework for organizations willing to embrace and develop intrapreneurship by utilizing their engineers’ intrapreneurial capabilities.
The findings from this study will help academics and organizations to get a deeper understanding of the benefits of intrapreneurship in technology firms. It will help in understanding how an organization can unleash the intrapreneurial capabilities of their engineers, thus making better use of their potential. This research holds practical significance for both leaders and engineers. Leaders can facilitate a supportive environment to promote intrapreneurship and drive innovation. Engineers will see the benefits of getting involved in intrapreneurial projects/activities, increasing job satisfaction, and getting access to resources to pursue their initiatives.