Case Name :      Intrapreneurship at Alcatel-Lucent

Authors :           Simon Parker, Ramasastry Chandrasekhar

Source :             Ivey Publishing

Case ID :            W14642

Discipline :        General Management

Case Length :    14 pages

Solution Sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

Since 2006, Alcatel-Lucent, an international telecommunications equipment manufacturer based in Paris, France, has been conducting boot camps for its employees to provide business training and help them monetize their innovative ideas with a view to creating value for the company. The program has led to 32 projects of which two have been commercialized, three transferred to business units within Alcatel-Lucent and one spun off. In 2012, however, the boot camps were discontinued due to a cost reduction program aimed at making the company cash-flow positive. Now, in June 2014, after a change in top management and a desire to regain the innovative edge against its competition has revived the idea, the company’s director of Open Innovation & Intrapreneurship is facing three dilemmas: how to reconcile the big business intolerance for failure with failure-prone intrapreneurship, how to design a forward-looking component into intrapreneurship and how to change the design and architecture of the boot camp in its new edition.