The Role of Intrapreneurship in Portuguese Startups

Abstract

Intrapreneurship is becoming a key factor in the growth of a company in a highly dynamic and progressively more competitive business environment. The idea of intrapreneurship is to encourage greater employee involvement within the organisation in which they work, giving them the freedom to innovate and experiment in a proactive, creative, and innovative way. In the startups, the role of intrapreneurship is of great relevance knowing that startups are designed to scale and grow exponentially in a short time and with few resources. Innovation is at the core of a startup and intrapreneurship initiatives allow leveraging this capacity in startups. Accordingly, this study seeks to explore the phenomenon of intrapreneurship in startups, seeking to understand how formal and informal intrapreneurship initiatives are taken on by startups, and also exploring the role played by existing resources to support these initiatives. The results of the study allow us to conclude that startups value intrapreneurship initiatives despite financial constraints that overlap with time constraints that affect what can be allocated to these activities. Finally, medium-sized startups and those with more qualified human capital tend to value and support intrapreneur initiatives more intensely. In contrast, startups with less academically qualified human capital offer worse conditions and support to intrapreneur activities.