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The Fourth Industrial Revolution has escalated innovation to new heights unseen, creating an evolution of innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and as a result, a more Innovative CSR. With this evolution comes also the evolution of the ‘Preneur’ from social entrepreneur to corporate social entrepreneur and corporate social intrapreneur. It is therefore important to acknowledge that social entrepreneurship is not just for the social sector, or start-up entrepreneur – corporations can also be social entrepreneurs. This chapter establishes an understanding of this possibility alongside solving wicked problems and challenges, and how to provide collaborative networks and co-creation experiences to assist others on this journey. More importantly, the chapter discusses how corporates can assist millennials (and Generation Z) by funding and incubating their innovative or social enterprise idea under the umbrella of CSR strategy, until it is ready to be released to the world. The chapter is supported by academic literature and business publications with suggestions for future research opportunities.

As of 2020, London's Financial Times had ranked Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC) as one of the world's leading executive education institutions and the top such institution in Latin America for 15 consecutive years. In 2011, FDC was also ranked fifth on the Financial Times' list of the 40 most respected business schools in the world. For FDC itself and for its co-founder, Emerson de Almeida, this recognition was a wonderful way of celebrating the 35th anniversary of an institution that has become a leader in applied management education in Brazil.

How did this young Brazilian institution achieve this? As is the case for any great undertaking, many people played crucial roles in its creation and consolidation. However, its history is closely tied to the life of its co-founder, Emerson de Almeida.

Emerson was FDC's Chief Executive from its foundation in 1976 until 2012, when he became President of its Board of Governance. ¹ He is primarily an innovator and drew his inspiration from visits to world-renowned business schools. Once he understood the needs arising from executive thinking processes, he was able to adapt these schools' best practices to suit the Brazilian culture and context.

‘You must always try the impossible’, he says. This case study presents the story of an exceptional institutional intrapreneur who championed and led the transformation of executive education in Brazil.

Elmar Mock's extraordinary story began in a small village in Switzerland. Born in 1954, he was the son of an Austrian immigrant and a Swiss mother. School was difficult, as he struggled with dyslexia. Nevertheless, he graduated from engineering school, obtained a job with a Swiss manufacturer, ETA. By the age of 26, he had co-invented the Swatch. Following the accidental death of his brother, Stéphane, in 1985, he decided to leave his job and launch his own creativity and innovation consulting company, Creaholic, in 1986.

In 2014, Elmar retired from Creaholic and created with his second wife Hélène Mock née Kett, a second company: ‘Mock-Kett’. He has created more than 80 families of patents in various industries and has been involved in more than 600 projects. He is also a member of the advisory boards of some of the spin-offs incubated by Creaholic. He remains active as a speaker and international consultant with ‘Mock-Kett’, which promotes the motivational side of invention. He has received numerous awards and his book ‘The Innovation Factory’ has been published in three languages.

The case depicts a one-of-a-kind creative mindset and offers in-depth reflections on the concepts of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship and their applications in organizations. ¹

Alain Bouchard was born in 1949. He bought his first convenience store in 1978, when he was almost 30 years old. By then, he already had nearly 10 years of experience in the sector. He had already been involved in the start-up of more than 200 convenience stores. He understood that if he was to transform his newly acquired store into a chain and build something big, he needed to set up a team of people with complementary skills to help him make acquisitions.

In 2023, there are roughly 15,000 convenience stores operating under the Circle K/Ingo/Couche-Tard banners, employing 130,000 people in more than 30 countries. Annual sales are more than US$60 billion. Alain Bouchard officially retired from his position as President and CEO in 2014 and became Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board. He continues to be a major shareholder. He is still actively involved in strategic orientations and in identifying potential acquisitions. He has become a ‘Chief Culture Officer’ involved in executive leadership mentoring. He has never stopped communicating the importance of innovative, creative and intrapreneurial behaviour at all levels of the enterprise.

This case study presents Alain Bouchard, the man and the entrepreneur. It shows how he learned and mastered the craft of starting, acquiring, managing and developing convenience stores. It looks at how he encouraged the people around him to act as facilitators and intrapreneurs. It describes his values, how he works and learned to live with risk.

This chapter attempts to advance our understanding regarding social innovation with a focus on public sector organizations. The aim is to answer the following question: “How does a manager’s novel knowledge gained from decisional interventions act as a resource to achieve social innovation?” The study employed a qualitative research approach. Findings have stemmed from secondary sources such as officially published reports and media releases of three local councils of Victoria, Australia. The data were first contextually positioned and then analyzed by following the Gioia methodology. Research findings indicate that tacit knowledge gained by public managers helps them to make better decisional interventions. In different situations such as handling disturbance, negotiating with other parties, allocating resources, or being an intrapreneur, the decisions and its quality will be improved if public managers enhance their personal knowledge. This study also offers policymakers a new approach to deal with the social problems innovatively. It, therefore, provides insights on topics such as sustained social transformation through public reforms, navigation of resources, and wise leadership.

Entrepreneurship is an emerging and evolving field of inquiry. Entrepreneurship research has been expanding its boundaries by exploring and developing explanations and predictions of entrepreneurship phenomena in terms of events such as innovation, new venture creation and growth as well as characteristics of individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations. The largest institutionalized community of entrepreneurship scholars – the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management – has developed an entrepreneurship specific domain that incorporates the creation and management of new businesses, small businesses and family businesses, and the characteristics and special problems of entrepreneurs; it has further identified major topics such as new venture ideas and strategies, ecological influences on venture creation and demise, the acquisition and management of venture capital and venture teams, self-employment, the owner-manager, management succession, corporate venturing, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development. One growing entrepreneurship research sub-field is corporate entrepreneurship (intrapreneurship), i.e. entrepreneurship in existing organizations. Emerging in the past two decades, the initial research in corporate entrepreneurship focused on new business venturing, i.e. the formation of new ventures by existing organizations, mostly corporations, and the focus on the entrepreneurial individual inside a corporation – this focus was then extended to include entrepreneurial characteristics at the organizational level. Corporate entrepreneurship research has evolved into three focal areas. The first area of focus is on the individual intrapreneur (Jennings, Cox & Cooper, 1994; Jones & Butler, 1992; Knight, 1989; Lessem, 1988; Luchsinger & Bagby, 1987; McKinney & McKinney, 1989; Pinchot, 1985; Ross, 1987; Souder, 1981), mainly emphasizing the intrapreneur’s individual characteristics. The recognition and support of entrepreneurs in organizations is also a part of this focal area. The second area of focus has been on the formation of new corporate ventures (Burgelman, 1985; Carrier, 1994; Cooper, 1981; Fast & Pratt, 1981; Hisrich & Peters, 1984; Hlavacek & Thompson, 1973; Krueger & Brazeal, 1994; MacMillan, Block & Narasimha, 1984; Szypersky & Klandt, 1984; Vesper, 1990); this area’s primary emphasis is on the different of types of new ventures, their fit with the corporation, and their enabling corporate internal environment. The third area of focus is on the entrepreneurial organization (Burgelman, 1983; Drucker, 1985; Duncan et al., 1988; Hanan, 1976; Kanter, 1984; Kuratko et al., 1993; Merrifield, 1993; Muzyka, de Konning & Churchill, 1995; Pinchot, 1985; Quinn, 1979; Rule & Irwin, 1988; Schollhammer, 1981; Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990; Stopford & Baden-Fuller, 1994), which mainly emphasizes the characteristics of these organizations.