This study uses an Entrepreneurship as Practice (EAP) approach, specifically Goffman’s dramaturgical lens, to address: what practices do corporate entrepreneurs use to cultivate positive impressions, while simultaneously engaging in rule-breaking to accomplish their innovations? While decision-makers in large organizations typically disapprove of employees who break rules, corporate entrepreneurs often see rules as inhibiting innovation. Corporate entrepreneurs face an interesting conundrum: they must undermine organizational processes to launch their innovation, while simultaneously gaining decision-makers’ support.
Although extant theory suggests that successful innovators operate under the radar, it remains silent on the specific practices they engage in to create and maintain positive impressions with their decision makers. Based on archival data and 138 interviews with decision-makers and corporate entrepreneurs, I find that through dramaturgical realization the latter successfully demonstrated that their rule-breaking was pro-social in nature.
This study’s theoretical contributions lie in using the newly emerging EAP lens to identify how corporate entrepreneurs’ impression management practices connect with the practices of the larger organization, thereby contributing to both corporate entrepreneurship and impression management literatures. This study’s practical contributions lie in sensitizing corporate entrepreneurs on how to manage impressions when engaging in (prosocial) rule-breaking.

Research Summary: This multicompany qualitative field study combines strategy process and strategy‐as‐practice perspectives to show how innovators successfully gain adoption for their autonomous innovations by reframing the meaning and potential of the associated internal resources to create fit with their organization's strategy. Mapping the five steps involved in the resource reframing process onto the different parts of the Bower‐Burgelman process model of strategic change shows that innovators can shape the strategic context for their autonomous innovations before external market validation is available. These findings confirm the unique potential and importance of different forms of discourse in shaping the strategic innovation process.Managerial Summary: How do innovators from lower levels of an organization gain approval for their innovations especially when their ideas do not readily fit their organization's strategy? to explore this question, we conducted 138 interviews with innovators and their decision makers in 14 firms based in Silicon Valley. We find that successful innovators shape a story supporting their innovation by rethinking their firm's current and potential resources. They then use this story to convince decision makers that their innovation creates unique competitive advantage. Contrary to conventional wisdom, decision makers approved such innovations even without external validation, solely based on the innovators' success in depicting their reorganization of the firm's resources.

How do innovators in large organizations acquire resources for their early-stage, untested, unproven innovations? Multiple established projects compete for scarce resources in large organizations. Innovators pursuing early-stage, untested innovations face considerable constraints in accessing scarce resources. Literature enumerates various sanctioned and unsanctioned methods by which innovators acquire resources, such as borrowing, begging, scavenging, amplifying, bootlegging, and finagling – defined as obtaining resources through deceitful or underhanded methods. However, few theories explain how innovators act unconventionally, elude constraints to acquire resources, and yet gain acceptance for their innovations. To address this question, this study uses field data from nine organizations based primarily in Silicon Valley. Successful innovators employ organizational ingenuity or creative solutions to gain resources in the face of constraints. They employ two types of ingenuity: material ingenuity, creatively re-imagining the use of resources; and process ingenuity, using creative processes to gain resources. In the early stages, innovators focus on managing their innovation’s legitimacy and use managerial attention as a key lever. They maximize managerial attention when employing material ingenuity and minimize managerial attention when utilizing process ingenuity. Theories highlighting the relationship between legitimacy and resource acquisition suggest that individuals gain resources when they establish legitimacy. Conversely, study results indicate that the process of gaining resources can lend legitimacy to early-stage innovations.