Building Responsible Innovation in International Organizations through Intrapreneurship

Abstract Responsible innovation to address grand societal challenges has become the raison d’être of international organizations, such as the United Nations. Although these entities are established to act responsibly, they struggle to innovate. Acknowledging the tensions of this unique context, this study applies an inductive research methodology drawing on eight case studies of intrapreneurial initiatives in socially oriented organizations. The initiatives originated in country offices and scaled either organically (country‐by‐country) or strategically (via headquarters). This distinguishes two ways how the initiatives mitigate different responsible innovation tensions to foster competence development, structural alignment, and mission stretch. The findings add to the literatures on responsible innovation and intrapreneurship in large, complex organizations by uncovering the boundary conditions of non‐profit intrapreneurship, its tensions, and its scaling processes. This study builds theory that intrapreneurial initiatives can foster digital transformation and contribute to the development of an organizational capability for responsible innovation via organizational imprinting.