**7. Recommendations for corporate entrepreneurship in large, global, industrial organizations**

In this chapter, the authors discussed the desire for large, global, industrial organizations to capture the innovation spirit of entrepreneurs. We have identified this as corporate entrepreneurship, but we have also described the challenges in these organizations that hinder corporate entrepreneurship. We have outlined the different levels of innovation and explained that these large organizations tend to allow local business units to focus on research and development for core innovation, but they attempt to control innovation that is 'outside the core' at a corporate-level function. We also described some tools that corporate entrepreneurs could utilize to accelerate innovation. Our research indicated that some of these tools are widely used and are perceived as effective, but others are commonly utilized and are not seen as effective. Even more surprising, some are perceived as potentially effective, but they are not utilized much at all. In this section, we briefly discuss recommendations to accelerate innovation in these large, global corporations.

Researchers and scholars have analyzed and discussed recommendations for innovation acceleration for years, and our own research, through literature review and primary study, has focused on a few key recommendations. Perhaps the first thing that organizations need to develop is a strategy for innovation. Nagji and Tuff described this as the organization understanding its innovation ambition [14]. Companies need to ask themselves if they want to persist in developing iterative innovations for current customers or develop adjacent innovations or solutions that are new to the company. They could also decide to develop new innovations for new markets, which is transformational innovation. Whatever their decision, they should know that different types of innovation are managed differently. Core innovations are best left to local business units, mostly through their internal research and development. At the opposite end of the spectrum, transformational innovation is best

#### *Corporate Entrepreneurship: Innovation in Global, Corporate Environments DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111805*

managed by a separate organization. Scholars have argued that to develop transformational innovation the individuals responsible need to be placed in an independent organization untethered to the corporate processes and administration of the parent firm, and especially, they need to have their own budget. That way, budgets that were allocated to their efforts are not absorbed into the larger organization or transitioned to other projects.

Our research is also quite clear that organizations need to speak the same language when it comes to innovation. We discovered that there is a great deal of confusion within organizations about the innovation that their organizations are pursuing and who is responsible for it. A common language and guiding set of processes is imperative. That is why other authors have argued for a centralized innovation group. These departments, as we discussed above, may not be entirely responsible for innovation, but they can train and mentor others within the organization and coordinate innovation efforts.

Combining these, the need for an innovation strategy and organizing for innovation, we also recommend the management of an innovation pipeline as a portfolio. These large companies tend to be quite good at product portfolio management; however, they do not seem to manage their innovations as a portfolio of potential opportunities. As Nagji and Tuff indicated, 'Pipeline management should focus on the iterative development of a few promising ideas, not the ruthless filtering of many' ([14], p. 7). Pipeline management also requires that an internal group, hopefully a centralized innovation team, follows innovation projects through the pipeline to monitor their progress against goals. For this, the team needs to create a set of meaningful metrics that applies to all projects. These metrics should be easy to understand for corporate managers to assess project progression.

Finally, we recommend that while organizations need to coordinate innovation efforts internally, as our corporate entrepreneurship model suggests, they should also develop relationships with innovation teams externally. These relationships should be strategic, few in number, and fit into the parent organization's ways of working, culture, and processes.
