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Corporate entrepreneurship literature has identified the overall phenomena of intrapreneurship, but there is much more to know about an individual intrapreneur. This paper investigates the individual intrapreneurial characteristics empirically and presents descriptive statistics of a sample with 4,011 respondents. The findings paint a picture of the characteristics of the average intrapreneur: a 42-year-old man with a university degree employed in his host corporation in the manufacturing industry for about 0–5 years and has a manager position in a large corporation of 50–249 employees. The results contribute to the corporate entrepreneurship literature by showing different descriptive statistics of what characterizes an average intrapreneur. Implications for management of the corporations are discussed in order to encourage employees to behave intrapreneurially. Thus, corporations that identify, retain, and support their intrapreneurs tend to perform better than others. 

This paper demonstrates the relevance of the theory of planned behavior to predict the drivers of employee intentions to become engaged in the development of new products and services. The results from a survey of 3,435 employees of Swedish companies, including small, medium-sized, and large firms, reveal a number of factors related to attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control that have either a positive or a negative influence on the presence of such intentions. We further show how the strength of the identified relationships varies with firm size. Overall, the findings suggest that firms may differ substantially, in terms of their ability to support employee initiatives that are critical for sustained introduction of new products and services. Our study contributes to the corporate entrepreneurship literature by explaining how organizational and individual conditions drive the introduction of new products and services. 

We reconcile the theory on corporate culture and gender to develop and test hypotheses predicting the spawning of intrapreneurs. The results from a representative, large scale survey of employees in Swedish private companies suggest a gender sensitive perspective on corporate culture, which relaxes the assumption of cultural homogeneity. Specifically, a competitive corporate culture is likely to spawn male intrapreneurs, whereas a corporate culture with intrapreneurial role models spawns both male and female intrapreneurs, but particularly female. Implications for management of the growing organizations with regard to corporate entrepreneurship, human resources, and gender equality are discussed.

The corporate entrepreneurship literature has identified the importance of intrapreneurs for maintaining growth, revitalization, and performance of corporations, but little is known about intrapreneurs and how they perceive their corporate working conditions. The working conditions in the corporation have an effect on employees’ behavior. This paper empirically investigates corporate conditions from the individual’s perspective as well as the types of intrapreneurs that exist. The findings from a cluster analysis of intrapreneurs suggests that there are three types of intrapreneurs: resilient intrapreneurs, neglected intrapreneurs, and privileged intrapreneurs. Overall, the findings show that intrapreneurial behavior and corporate conditions are related and that organizations purposefully can design their corporate environment to support different intrapreneurs.