Corporate Entrepreneurship - E

Course Content

In increasingly turbulent environments, established firms face risks from disruptive innovations, (new) competitors, and shifting customer needs. Consequently, creating new innovative business opportunities within existing companies becomes imperative for the long-term success and survival of firms. This course aims to provide students an in-depth understanding of corporate entrepreneurship. During the course, the students will receive advanced insights in tools, processes, and strategies that corporates can apply to stimulate entrepreneurial thinking and action. We discuss both internal and external dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship.

Learning objectives

Students will be stimulated to apply and reflect on academically grounded tools and insights on the topic of corporate entrepreneurship. By means of group assignments, students will be challenged to apply these insights in a particular setting.

Structure of the course

Session 1: Introduction to corporate venturing (Jan 16: 11:30  – 15:15)

In the first session, we will set the scene for this course. We will provide:

• An overview of the course and the assignments
• An overview of the topic of corporate entrepreneurship
• A guest lecture on corporate venturing: Jörg Rheinboldt

  Session 2: Imitating startups: Internal corporate venturing (Jan 23: 11:30 – 15:15)

In session 2, we will:

·        Discuss options that corporates have to engage in internal corporate venturing with a special focus on organizational ambidexterity

·        Work in groups to examine internal corporate venturing in practice through a case study on Volkswagen Digital Lab (study rooms are provided for this task)

 Mandatory preparation material:

·       O’Reilly, C.A. & Tushman, L.T. 2004. The Ambidextrous Organization. Harvard Business Review.

·       Stanford case study: Innovation at Volkswagen: The Story of Digital:Lab

 Session 3: External corporate venturing: Accelerators and Corporate Venture Capital (Jan 25: 09:45 – 11:15)

 In session three, we will:

·        Discuss options that corporates have to invest in and work with startups

·        Discuss the tension between strategic and financial objectives when investing in startups

Mandatory preparation material:

·        Lerner, J. 2013. Corporate Venturing. Harvard Business Review, 91(10): 86-94

·        Bettenmann, D., Giones, F., Brem, A., & Gneiting, P. (2021). Break out to open innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review.

·        Moschner, S. L., Fink, A. A., Kurpjuweit, S., Wagner, S. M., & Herstatt, C. (2019). Toward a better understanding of corporate accelerator models. Business Horizons, 62(5), 637-647.

Session 4: External corporate venturing: Venture Client Model (Jan 31: 08:00 – 11:15)

 In session four, we will:

·        Discuss options that corporates have to invest in and work with startups

·        Discuss the tension between strategic and financial objectives when investing in startups

Mandatory preparation material:

·        Case study: How Corporates Co-innovate with Startups: The BMW Startup Garage

·        Gimmy, G., Kanbach, D., Stubner, S., König, A. & Ender, A. 2017. What BMW's Corporate VC Offers That Regular Investors Can't, Harvard Business Review

Session 5:  Collaborating with startups: Open innovation strategies (Feb 7: 8.00 – 11.15)

In session five, we will provide:

• An overview of the specifics of open innovation strategies
• Their implications for the structure and organization of corporates
• Insights on open innovation and crowdsourcing
• Examples of large German corporates and their open innovation projects
• Guest lecture on open innovation tools and methods: Niclas Kröger, Hyve

 Obligatory preparation material:

West, J., & Bogers, M. (2014). Leveraging external sources of innovation: a review of research on open innovation. Journal of product innovation management, 31(4), 814-831.

Session 6: How to make effective decisions in corporate innovation and venturing (Feb 20: 8.00 – 11.15)

In session six, we will provide:

·        Classical decisions for de/selecting ideas and projects

·        In-depth insights into decision making processes

·        Decision errors type I and II

·        Discussion on relevant scenarios for decision making in a corporate entrepreneurship setting

Obligatory preparation material:

Csaszar, F. A., & Eggers, J. P. (2013). Organizational decision making: An information aggregation view. Management Science, 59(10), 2257-2277.

Further reading for your interest (content will be covered in class):

Csaszar, F. A. (2018). Limits to the wisdom of the crowd in idea selection. In Organization Design. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Session 7: Workshop on OKR (Objectives and Key Results) (March 8: Insert Time)

In this workshop, we will provide:

·        Further information on the final assignment

·        Introduction to OKRs

·        Specific Case of OKRs

·        An approach on how to use OKRs in the corporate entrepreneurship setting

·        Insights on how to use that approach for your individual assignment

Obligatory preparation material:

Watch these two videos:

John Doerr Ted Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4N1q4RNi9I

John Doerr at MIT Sloan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiQ3Ofcmo50

If you want to watch some more extended versions, refer to these videos: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYOyI8_r5sY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvFQovINVPQ

Summary of exam components

 The following summarizes the exam components:

Individual Assignment (Development of an OKR strategy for Corporate Entrepreneurship), Component: Individual, Weighting: 70%

Group Assignments (Group work during the progress of the course, pass/fail), Component: Group, Weighting: 30%

 Final Grade: 100%

Additional information on the individual assignment and group assignments will be provided during the lectures.

Individual assignment: 70%