Sustainability intrapreneurship: The role of employees in early-stage sustainability transitions of large technical systems

Doctoral thesis, 2026

Large technical systems, such as energy grids, transport networks and freshwater and sewage systems, are socio-technical systems designed to last for many decades. Typically, they operate under strong regulation and are dominated by incumbent actors who are frequently portrayed as reluctant to commit to novel ideas and experiments. Therefore, large technical systems are often characterised by path dependence, and newcomers, such as entrepreneurs or actors from adjacent sectors, have limited room to initiate path-breaking innovations. Not just ‘anyone’ can design and build a large technical system, such as an electricity grid.

Still, recent empirical findings show that path-breaking innovation also emerges within large technical systems, and there has been a growing scholarly interest in understanding this phenomenon. However, this research has remained at the organisational level, overlooking the internal complexity of organisations, including the individuals within them. As a result, there is a gap where an intrapreneurial perspective could provide new insights.

Relying on three separate studies containing several empirical cases, primarily from the Swedish energy and traffic safety sectors, the thesis applies a qualitative approach to examine the locus of agency in path-breaking innovations in large technical systems. A role-based typology of sustainability intrapreneurs is proposed, distinguishing between the agenda setter, the demonstrator and the networking educator, each role contributing differently to the development and scaling of path-breaking innovation. Findings show that some incumbent employees act as sustainability intrapreneurs and play these roles, at their own discretion, to mobilise resources, challenge dominant technologies and visualise alternative futures for colleagues and others.

Theoretically, the thesis integrates insights from the entrepreneurship literature into the sustainability transitions literature, allowing the development of a novel analytical lens focusing on incumbent employees. This incumbent firm-internal bottom-up agency has previously not been represented in the conceptualisation of incumbents in sustainability transitions. Furthermore, the proposed concept of sustainability intrapreneurship is a new form of intrapreneurship, focusing explicitly on improving the socio-technical system rather than merely the employer’s organisational benefits. By capturing sustainability intrapreneurship as both a theoretical concept and an empirical phenomenon, this thesis contributes to understanding how agency for early-stage sustainability transitions emerges, evolves and materialises within large technical systems.