Corporate “Excelerators”: How Organizations Can Speed Up Crowdventuring for Exponential Innovation

The emergence of exponential technologies, along with the affirmation of a collective intelligence paradigm, is creating new competitive pressures and entrepreneurial opportunities for organizations aiming to generate a spectrum of diverse outputs ranging from product innovation to large-scale corporate renewal. The entrepreneurial process designed and realized within the organization has traditionally been referred to as corporate entrepreneurship. Today, the affirmation of open innovation and the increasing role of employee creativity and initiative as drivers of innovation and entrepreneurship activities in companies are giving rise to a new concept of “crowdventuring.” In particular, exponential organizations, which are able to leverage disruptive technologies to create socioeconomic value, are well positioned in the emerging competitive scenario. Based on a number of internal and external drivers, these organizations can excel within their markets operating as Excelerators, i.e., organizations where people can think and act differently, embrace radical change, and create more sustainable outcomes. This chapter describes the evolution towards crowdventuring and presents the attributes of exponential organizations that act as entrepreneurial accelerators.