Hidden Innovators : The Case of the Sustaining Engineers

The main aim of this paper is to understand what motivates engineers to innovate in multinational corporations. It is based on a single case study within a product development unit of a multinational automotive company in the UK. The research is exploratory in nature and seeks to provide insights into what motivates certain employees to act entrepreneurially in a large rules-based organization. An inductive research approach was employed to develop insights into the way in which a group of ‘patent holding’ engineers construct their world or work. The mixed methods approach included a survey of 100 patent holding engineers, followed by twelve interviews and one focus group discussion with six participants.