Intrapreneurship refers to bottom-up entrepreneurial activities by employees in existing firms and is an important source of innovation and organizational growth. As intrapreneurship is typically not codified in job descriptions, firms largely depend on the willingness of employees to develop intrapreneurial ideas during their own personal time. This project will explore to what extent subtle non-monetary cues, commonly referred to as nudging, can be used to influence intrapreneurial behavior in a large corporation.
Using a randomized controlled trial, we allocate employees to different experimental conditions where ideas can be submitted to an innovation challenge for further support and development. In a 2x2 and a 1x3 design we randomly apply interventions with default options, peer effects and minority/majority social norms as nudges. We combine the experimental data with survey data, expert evaluations, corporate HR data and post-hoc data to examine the effect of corporate nudging on the number and quality of intrapreneurial activities from idea generation to market success.
We use of a multi-method approach, combining experimental, archival, survey and interview data. We apply three interventions (default options; peer effects; minority/majority social norms) to an existing corporate innovation process where employees submit ideas to the top management in order to receive corporate funding for further development of these ideas. The three interventions are all applied at the stage where employees are asked to submit their ideas to a contest. The contest is designed in line with an existing corporate innovation process.
Intervention Start Date
2015-04-20
Intervention End Date
2015-06-30
Primary Outcomes (end points)
We have several outcome variables to measure the effectiveness of the interventions. First, we measure the number of ideas submitted to the contest. Second, we measure the quality of ideas with expert evaluations. Third, we measure the success with which employees develop their ideas to a marketable product.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Experimental Design
not available
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Coin flip randomization within size categories
Randomization Unit
individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No
Sample size: planned number of clusters
800 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
800 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Sample size in first phase (2x2 design): 800/4 = 200 individuals per task. Sample size in second phase (1x3 design; 1 treatment with 3 dimensions applied to one half of participants of first phase): 400/3 = 133 individuals per task
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)