Entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial growth in Central and Eastern European ventures driven by the fit between micro and macro level opportunity exploitation

Based on theories from entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship literatures, this paper investigates how the fit between micro level entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation and macro level entrepreneurial influence sales and employment growth in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) firms. A multiple case study analysis contrasts young entrepreneurial and established intrapreneurial firms to the established conservative firms. Our findings for entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial ventures are in stark contrast to those of conservative firms. Not only entrepreneurial but also intrapreneurial firms are better at exploiting micro-level opportunities in the technology and market domains empowered by their intra-organisational competences. Moreover, they may purposefully select what macro-level opportunity to exploit, a process which contributes to their higher sales and employment growth. In other words, they are able to create the fit between micro and macro environments to generate high growth in stark contrast to conservative firms.