Experimental Spaces As Temporary Entrepreneurial Work Environments For Incubating Wildcard Ideas

Abstract

Companies often establish structured innovation programs such as innovation labs and corporate accelerators to harness employee creativity and enable them to experiment with new ideas to challenge established practices, actions or business models. What is yet to be understood is how individuals lacking such structured innovation programs in organizations pursue their ideas. This study explores inductively how individuals initiate and develop novel ideas outside the core corporate structures through the lens of experimental spaces. Experimental spaces as temporary entrepreneurial work settings provide distinct means for individuals to interact and experiment with new ideas and approaches. Using the concept of boundary work and drawing on an embedded multiple case study of six wildcard ventures that originate outside the core corporate structures, this paper unpacks the individual entrepreneurial efforts and their connections to supportive actors contributing to the emergence of experimental spaces. The findings reveal two distinct entrepreneurial venture paths, internal networked ventures and peripheral entrepreneurial ventures, that emerge through the establishment of supportive conditions along the venturing process, including different iterative product development, market engagement, and working style and methods.