Corporate entrepreneurship and rent creation: an integration of perspectives

Abstract

Firms engage in corporate entrepreneurship to increase competitiveness and sustain

performance through rejuvenation, renewal, and redefinition of their organizations, markets,

or industries. This is challenging to most firms, since it often involves new relations to

customers, suppliers and contact with less familiar industries. The reward for successful CE

engagement should be a more profitable firm. However, the potential to new value creation

and competitive advantages may originate from different sources within the firm and is quite

complex. Thus, even if the relationship between CE and performance has been well

researched and documented, there seem to be less understanding of the reasons why CE may

produce superior performance. CE may leverage several bases of competitive advantage. This

conceptual study argues that these bases may be explored through the entrepreneurial

orientation (EO), resource based (RBV) and dynamic capability (DC) perspectives. The study

links the RBV, EO and DC perspectives respectively to Richardian, Entrepreneurial and

Austrian rents. Each of these perspectives may thus provide their unique insight into how

entrepreneurship may create new rent streams and improve performance in firms. In total the

study contributes to further understanding of how and why CE may lead to superior

performance in firms.