Keywords
Organizational ambidexterity
Multiple-case study
Grounded theory
Submitted : 2026-05-20
Accepted : 2026-06-04
Published : 2026-06-19
Abstract
Against the ongoing reshaping of market patterns and industry divides driven by digital advancements, major corporations are facing growing urgency to overhaul their existing business frameworks. In response, some firms have established relatively autonomous entrepreneurial units, often referred to as internal ventures, through venture-capital-inspired mechanisms, including rigorous project selection criteria, equity-based incentive schemes, dedicated platform support, and market-oriented governance frameworks. This study refers to this practice as venture capital-style fission entrepreneurship. This phenomenon is already common among large domestic enterprises in China. Yet few have a clear grasp of its actual internal operation mode, nor do they fully recognize how it helps optimize corporate strategies and broaden the industrial business ecosystem. Drawing on organizational ambidexterity, this study adopts a multiple-case study design and grounded theory approach to examine four representative Chinese firms: Haier, Mengniu, Inspur, and Xiaomi. The findings show that, because of differences in resource endowments, organizational inertia, and external contextual pressures, VC-style fission entrepreneurship in large enterprises develops four fission orientations: behavioral triggering, knowledge evolution, resource reconfiguration, and ecosystem expansion. Under these orientations, firms configure mechanisms through organizational improvisation, composite learning, entrepreneurial bricolage, and ecosystem migration, thereby generating four corresponding fission capabilities: alertness-based response, knowledge transformation, resource reconfiguration, and network growth. These capabilities further give rise to four modes of VC-style fission entrepreneurship: rapid-response, learning-transformation, resource-reconfiguration, and ecosystem-expansion modes. The study further indicates that these four modes are not isolated. Rather, under the tension of organizational ambidexterity, they jointly constitute a dynamic evolutionary chain of “contextual driving-mechanism configuration-capability generation-value feedback.” By exploring the operation of VC-style fission entrepreneurship at the micro-process level, this study extends the explanatory boundary of organizational ambidexterity in the context of fission entrepreneurship and provides managerial implications for large enterprises seeking to systematically promote VC-style fission entrepreneurship.
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