A Corporate Entrepreneurship Perspective for the Internet of Things

The purpose of this paper is to establish an underlying framework for undertaking entrepreneurial initiatives within an established corporation, using the new Internet of Things(IoT) as the grounding example. We find that successful IoT initiatives require that management finds new customers and new use cases against which to innovate, invests in the development of new IoT-centric platforms, and considers new business model relative to the company’s traditional revenue and resource strategies. Collectively, these can represent the development of a new business within an established business, e.g. corporate entrepreneurship. The case study method was primary source field research, where we conducted a series of interviews with key managers involved in company strategy and new product development. These cases represent the spectrum of small, medium, and large size corporations, with outcomes that include new market applications’ technologies in the form of new product lines and services. The framework proposed is grounded in company experience and makes it the basis for further empirical research. This paper also has important implications for practitioners who are planning and implementing IoT innovations in their own respective companies. A market, platform, and business model changes must be integrated into a single comprehensive strategy to produce desired entrepreneurial outcomes.