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Environmental uncertainty, turbulence, and heterogeneity create a host of strategic and operational challenges for today’s organizations (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998). To cope with the challenge of simultaneously developing and nurturing both today’s and tomorrow’s core competencies, firms increasingly rely on effective use of corporate entrepreneurship (Covin & Miles, 1999). These facts make it imperative that managers at all levels actively participate in designing and implementing a strategy for corporate entrepreneurship actions. The recent literature reveals that there is a general although certainly not a complete consensus around the position that successful corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is linked to improvement in firm performance (Ireland et al., 2001). Covin, Ireland and Kuratko (2003) suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a legitimate path to high levels of organizational performance and that the understanding of corporate entrepreneurship as a valid and effective practice with real, tangible benefits is occurring across firm type and managerial levels. Other researchers cite corporate entrepreneurship’s importance as a growth strategy (Kuratko, 1993; Kuratko et al., 1993; Merrifield, 1993; Pinchott, 1985; Zahra, 1991; Zahra & Covin, 1995; Zahra, Kuratko & Jennings, 1999). As an example, Dess, Lumpkin and McGee (1999) note that, “Virtually all organizations – new start-ups, major corporations, and alliances among global partners – are striving to exploit product-market opportunities through innovative and proactive behavior” – the type of behavior that is called for by corporate entrepreneurship. Barringer and Bluedorn (1999) suggested that in light of the dynamism and complexity of today’s environments, “…entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors are necessary for firms of all sizes to prosper and flourish.” Developing an internal environment that cultivates employees’ interest in and commitment to creativity and the innovation that can result from it contributes to successful competition in today’s competitive arenas. A valuable and appropriate internal organizational environment is a product of effective work (often within the context of corporate entrepreneurship) by managers at all levels (Floyd & Lane, 2000).

This chapter focuses on how corporate entrepreneurs seize opportunities and deal with threats through resource acquisition, control, and use. When corporate entrepreneurs fail to gain control of preferred resources they must rely on their ability to optimize their use of resources on hand in order to avoid the typical limitations inherent in a constrained set of resources. However, control of resources, whether existing or supplementary, by itself is an insufficient basis for influencing performance. Performance also depends on an organization’s capacity to deploy resources in combination with strategically important organizational processes to affect a desired end. The way in which corporate entrepreneurs utilize their resources is likely to have a more significant effect on performance than is merely having control of them. The current research aims to elaborate on how corporate entrepreneurs can become more resourceful by using a vacillation approach to resource acquisition and utilization. In this context, vacillation is movement between exploration and exploitation, or knowledge acquisition and knowledge integration from a knowledge management perspective. Vacillation is distinguished from the “balance” hypothesis prevalent in the organizational ambidexterity literature. A balance hypothesis states that both exploration and exploitation may be pursued simultaneously either by creating structural or contextual organizational ambidexterity. Here, we explain how vacillation enables an organization’s corporate entrepreneurship posture to lead to improved performance. In this chapter, we first describe the extant literature and construct relationships between corporate entrepreneurship posture, organizational resource level, vacillation, and organizational performance. We then analyze the learning processes associated with vacillation and discuss the research and managerial implications associated with the proposed relationships.

We conjecture that there are five stages to academic entrepreneurship: motivation, governance, selection, competition, and performance. The process of academic entrepreneurship originates with the motivation of faculty, universities, industry, and government to commercialize knowledge that originates within the university setting. The model conceptualizes that the governance and competitiveness of the commercialized knowledge moderate the mode selection and ultimately the performance of academic entrepreneurship. The conceptual and empirical support for the model are derived from a theory-driven synthesis of articles related to academic entrepreneurship.

Teams are an important component to the success of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship. However, innovation teams often suffer because management fails to develop a change strategy and prepare managers and participants to work in teams. This chapter provides a discussion of the critical elements needed to prepare team member, including reviewing the team development process and offering insights on how to manage communication, conflict resolution, creative problem solving, and decision-making to enhance team performance. Additionally, research on the use of innovation teams is presented along with some recommendations for management to implement innovation teams in organizations.

This paper examines self‐directed work teams (SDWT) from a social psychological perspective. It is asserted that SDWTs, and other types of work teams, are part of a continuum of teamwork and member autonomy. Also, SDWT development is related to social psychological concepts of group formation. Common barriers to work teams are discussed. Conclusions emphasize the need for organizations to match the types of teams to their specific needs and resources.

In order to gain a perspective on the contemporary state of human resource management in smaller businesses, a total of 247 small firms were surveyed to investigate the degree and effectiveness of personnel/human resource practices currently being utilized. Using a data base of firms with less than 150 employees, three distinct size categories were devised to examine specific practices as small businesses grow in size. The results indicate that certain practices are more effective for smaller firms. In addition there is a higher level of sophistication in personnel practices than cited in the literature.

Entrepreneurship education has had a remarkable evolution over time and the number of entrepreneurship textbooks has multiplied given the increased interest in entrepreneurship programs in higher education. Yet, studies that review the coverage of textbooks focusing on entrepreneurship are scarce. This study provides an inventory of entrepreneurship textbooks and the topics they cover as well as specific emerging topics they do not cover by analyzing the content of 57 textbooks. Our results suggest that most textbooks provide significant coverage of such topics as the nature of entrepreneurship, business plans, financing, marketing, and cases. Among emerging concepts, social media has been relatively well covered with increasing coverage in more recent textbooks, while business canvas, as an example of alternatives to conventional business plans, is rarely covered. Most textbooks have provided little coverage of such topics as sales, family business, women and minorities, as well as ethics and sustainability. This study not only reveals areas that are covered by existing textbooks but also themes that future textbooks and research could cover to address the challenges of future entrepreneurship education.

There has been an ongoing debate regarding where a university should house entrepreneurship programs. Should they be in the business school, at the central administration level, or housed in another college such as engineering? Many argue that the entrepreneurship programs should be housed where the best ideas come from (i.e., engineering, computer science, or biosciences). Others strongly argue on traditional lines that entrepreneurship involves essential business tools so the programs need to be housed there. This chapter asserts that the debate over location is moot in regards to how to more effectively launch start-ups and create entrepreneurial talent. For a university to be effective, it needs to build an ecosystem that integrates programs, people, and ideas from across the campus and avoid the traditional silos that schools and colleges create. A model for this from the University of Missouri-Kansas City is used to illustrate an effective university entrepreneurial ecosystem.