The Practice of Corporate Entrepreneurship : Case study of Energy and Automotive Company

Sammanfattning: This thesis has the main purpose of uncovering the stages and success-failure factors to implement corporate entrepreneurship in energy and automotive companies. The goal is driven by the implication that not understanding the process and factors to be considered can result in the failure of new business development. The corporate entrepreneurship implementations within many corporations are heterogeneous and variative. Therefore, instead of looking at corporate entrepreneurship from a general standpoint, this research combines the two cases to figure out the practice of corporate entrepreneurship more deeply by looking at the similarities and differences between the two of them. The research is conducted in Sweden with the case of two Swedish Companies with different business focus: Volvo (automotive company) and Vattenfall (energy company). This research uses comparative case studies which use semi-structured interviews and analysis of company information. The interview respondents were seven people from the corporate level from different divisions in both companies and nine people from the venture level with different corporate venture projects. The findings of this thesis have identified a total of 21 critical activities in the development stages and 17 success factors in the corporate venture development based on the incorporation of practice in Volvo and Vattenfall. Both companies have many similar activities in the development stages and success factors in the internal venture development. Both of them give a similar picture of corporate entrepreneurship implementation. It shows that the practice of corporate entrepreneurship in Swedish companies has a pattern of firm behaviours. The differences between activities and success factors occur due to different types of projects and organizational structures.