An employee of a company is working to start a separate division. This project is out of the employee's normal duties and has not been assigned by…

Bootlegging is the term used to describe informal work on projects that an employee chooses to pursue without explicit authorization or formal assignment. These projects are outside of the employee's normal duties. The scenario describes exactly this: an employee is working on an unassigned project outside their regular responsibilities. The supervisor's informal encouragement does not change the classification of the activity from bootlegging to a formally sanctioned project.

A. Opportunity obsession: This is a personal characteristic or mindset of an intrapreneur, describing their intense focus on an opportunity, not the classification of the project itself.

B. Motivation to excel: This is a general personality trait that drives high-performing individuals, including intrapreneurs, but it does not describe the specific type of informal project activity.

D. Skunkworks: This term refers to a formal, often secretive, group or project that is officially sanctioned and funded by a company to operate outside normal bureaucratic structures. The project in the scenario is informal and unassigned.

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1. Kuratko

D. F. (2017). Entrepreneurship: Theory

Process

Practice (10th ed.). Cengage Learning. In Chapter 3

"Corporate Entrepreneurship

" bootlegging is defined as "secretly working on new ideas on company time and resources." The informal and unsanctioned nature is the key element.

2. Pinchot

G. (1985). Intrapreneuring: Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur. Harper & Row. Pinchot discusses how intrapreneurs often work on projects without formal budgets or approval

a practice that has come to be known as bootlegging. He contrasts this with formally approved ventures.

3. Criscuolo

P.

Salter

A.

& Ter Wal

A. L. J. (2014). Going underground: Bootlegging and individual innovative performance. Organization Science

25(5)

1287-1305. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0856. The article defines bootlegging as "research in which motivated individuals secretly organize the innovation process without formal permission from the official decision makers" (p. 1287)

highlighting its informal and unsanctioned nature.