A system model for corporate entrepreneurship

Purpose – To measure the factors contributing to corporate entrepreneurship cultivation and examine the relation between corporate entrepreneurship and innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach – With interviews and questionnaires, 58 large‐middle size enterprises in China were randomly surveyed to test the hypotheses. Factor analysis is used to corporate entrepreneurship cultivation factors, corporate entrepreneurship and innovation performance. And then, a series of multiple linear regression analyzes have been conducted to test the causality between the above three aspects. Findings – It is found that there are four factors contributing to corporate entrepreneurship, and it is suggested that corporations can cultivate corporate entrepreneurship to enhance corporate innovation performance. Research limitations/implications – It's not an exhaustive list of corporate entrepreneurship cultivation factors. And the size of samples is not large enough which perhaps limits its usefulness. Practical implications – Lack of corporate entrepreneurship is a common problem of the large corporations in China, so the system model which proved in the paper is useful to offer a guideline. Originality/value – The paper brings forth a system model to better the methods of cultivating corporate entrepreneurship to enhance corporate innovation performance based on an empirical study.