Cristian Granados Sánchez and Cris Bravo Monge, EGADE Business School professors, contribute a book chapter on entrepreneurial education.

By JOSÉ ÁNGEL DE LA PAZ | EGADE BUSINESS SCHOOL

In a world that demands more and rapid innovation, organizations must drive the development of high-potential intrapreneurs, while ensuring that they receive all the organizational support they need.

These are the conclusions of a study by Cristian Granados Sánchez and Cris Bravo Monge, EGADE Business School - Tecnológico de Monterrey professors, included in the book Innovation in Global Entrepreneurship Education. Teaching Entrepreneurship in Practice, published by the British publisher Edward Elgar.

In their chapter “The development of high-potential intrapreneurs: an executive education approach to drive innovation in Latin American companies”, the academics describe the role of the intrapreneur and how organizations use executive education and corporate universities to boost the development of leadership and innovation.

“The study not only addresses which competencies intrapreneurs have or could have, but also reflects on the difference between developing them and actually using them in companies. We recommend that organizations should create an innovation culture and ecosystem that supports intrapreneurs, thereby making it possible to identify opportunities and develop innovations,” explained Granados Sánchez, research professor, Department of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation.

The coauthors stress that a high-potential entrepreneur must have openness and creativity, humility, resilience/tolerance to uncertainty, systemic thinking, agility, and also be inspiring and empowering, competencies they assure can be taught or developed through executive education.

"We work with companies in consulting and executive education programs, and one of the topics they most frequently request is intrapreneurship. The fact that there was no clear definition of intrapreneurship, or of the characteristics or competencies of intrapreneurs, or how they can be developed, inspired us to carry out this study,”  stated Bravo Monge, adjunct professor, Department of Strategy and Leadership.

The chapter will be presented within the framework of the 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, the world's premier event for scholarly engagement around management and organization research.