Individuals become entrepreneurs because they intend to do so. The stronger the intention to be an entrepreneur, the more likely it is that it will happen. Intentions become stronger as individuals perceive an entrepreneurial career as feasible and desirable. These perceptions of feasibility and desirability are influenced by one's background and characteristics, such as education, personal values, age and work history, role models and support systems, and networks. Gender and race are also characteristics of individuals that help us understand the entrepreneurial phenomenon. Established firms can create environmental conditions to motivate individuals within their organizations to act entrepreneurially, that is, conditions that allow organizational members to perceive entrepreneurial outcomes as feasible and desirable. Within existing corporate structures, this entrepreneurial spirit and effort is called corporate entrepreneurship.

Corporate entrepreneurship requires an entrepreneurial management approach. To demonstrate this entrepreneurial approach, we contrasted entrepreneurially managed firms with traditionally managed firms on eight dimensions: (1) strategic orientation, (2) commitment to opportunity, (3) commitment of resources, (4) control of resources, (5) management structure, (6) reward philosophy, (7) growth orientation, and (8) entrepreneurial culture. Fortunately, three leading Swedish researchers developed a scale that enables us to assess firms in terms of where they fall on the scale between entrepreneurial and traditional management.

Organizations desiring an entrepreneurial culture need to encourage new ideas and experimental efforts, eliminate opportunity parameters, make resources available, promote a teamwork approach and voluntary corporate entrepreneurship, and enlist top management's support. The corporate entrepreneur also must have appropriate leadership characteristics. In addition to being creative, flexible, and visionary, the corporate entrepreneur must be able to work within the corporate structure. Corporate entrepreneurs need to encourage teamwork and work diplomatically across established structures. Open discussion and strong support of team members are also required. Finally, the corporate entrepreneur must be persistent to overcome the inevitable obstacles.

The process of establishing corporate entrepreneurship within an existing organization requires the commitment of management, particularly top management. The organization must carefully choose leaders, develop general guidelines for ventures, and delineate expectations before the entrepreneurial program begins. Training sessions are an important part of the process. As role models and entrepreneurial ventures are introduced, the organization must establish a strong organizational support system, along with a system of incentives and rewards to encourage team members. Finally, the organization should establish a system to expand successful ventures and eliminate unsuccessful ones.