Assessing Creativity and Risk-Taking in Corporate Entrepreneurs: An Experimental Pre-Test Design

Corporate Entrepreneurship relies on key individual characteristics such as creativity and risk-taking to drive innovation and strategic renewal within organizations. However, existing research lacks standardized methods to measure these characteristics effectively. This study employs an experimental approach to develop a pre-test design to assess creativity and risk-taking, comparing six PhD students (four female, two male; age: 25–38 years; different stages of doctoral studies in the field of entrepreneurship) - who share characteristics with corporate entrepreneurs - to eight students (four female, four male; age: 20–29 years; diverse academic backgrounds) as a comparison group. Specifically, tests were selected to measure Innovation, Idea Generation and Problem Solving (facets of creativity) as well as Intuition, Opportunity Recognition and Calculated risk (facets of risk-taking). Results of the pre-test design indicate a higher degree of risk taking and creativity of PhD students as compared to the comparison group (e. g. Remote Associates Test - Answer Correctness of 65 % vs. 55 %; Iowa Gambling Task - High Risk Choices 67 % vs. 51 %). The findings suggest the potential of the test design as an instrument for future studies on corporate entrepreneurial characteristics and contribute to the methodological challenges in assessing them. The study offers insights into refining measurement tools for corporate entrepreneurship research and shaping talent identification processes in innovation-driven organizations.