Corporate entrepreneurship: the innovative challenge for a new global economic reality

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) as a valid and effective area of research has real and tangible benefits for emerging scholars because their work will significantly impact an emerging strategy. The research on CE has evolved over the last 40 years beginning very slowly and growing in importance through the decades. While the inherent value of entrepreneurial action on the part of established organizations has been established, there remains a greater need for further research about CE in organizational settings. Fortunately, knowledge accumulation on the topic of CE has been occurring at a rapid rate, and many of the elements essential to constructing a theoretically grounded understanding of the domains of CE can now be identified. However, despite the recent expansion in CE research, the theoretical and empirical knowledge about the domain of CE and the entrepreneurial behavior on which it is based are still key issues that warrant a deeper understanding. Ongoing scholarly work has also raised new and important research questions and identified further theoretical avenues requiring exploration. In this article, we review some of the significant research work that has been done in the CE literature and examine the future directions for CE researchers. The increasing value of future research in this domain, including the research highlighted in this special issue, may very well enhance the innovative challenges confronting organizations in this new global economic reality.