The imprinting process of corporate venturing units

Building on the imprinting hypothesis, the paper unfolds the founding process of corporate venturing units in order to explain the apparent multitude of different exemplars of venturing activities. Corporate venturing units are approached as organizational forms of corporate entrepreneurial behavior, socially constructed by entrepreneurial agents. The role of corporate entrepreneurs in cognitively constructing and configuring specific elements that remain as fundamental features of these units is proposed. The instrumental cases of the foundation of two venturing units by their parent corporations are employed to illustrate how founding elements constructed as an outcome of the corporate entrepreneurs’ sensemaking and sensegiving process imprint the postfounding behavior of the venturing units.