In view of the multidimensional crisis that Puerto Rico, and his higher education institutions, are going through, entrepreneurship emerges as a response to this crisis. Nonetheless, the problem of this investigation is the ambiguity around the entrepreneurship concept that prevents the grounding of the concept for integration in the educational field. The purpose of this study was to explore the entrepreneurship phenomenon from the view of leaders in educational organizations, inquiring around themes like background, motivations and entrepreneurial process of this leaders.

Through a multiple case study design, intra-entrepreneurial leaders were interviewed in five higher education institutions of Puerto Rico. A semi-structured interview guide with 19 questions was developed around the background and motivation of leaders; the context and environment of the proceedings; and the results and lessons learned of those proceedings. Each interview lasted between one and two hours, and was transcribed for eventual analysis using NVivo 12 for Mac and a grounded theory analysis model.

Findings suggest that: (1) there are conceptual differences that limits the integration of entrepreneurship in the context; (2) the integration of entrepreneurship consists in the appliance of some competencies to the proceedings; (3) context is full of challenges that drives the leaders to reflect and iterate in view of new evidences; (4) personal and professional background of those leaders influenced on the proceedings they lead; and (5) the results of the proceedings add value to the institution, but they aren’t feeding the metrics institutions normally use. This investigation adds to the emerging studies about entrepreneurship in Puerto Rico, and to provide grounding to the concept. With this in mind, two main recommendations are made: (1) to develop the entrepreneurial mindset at country level there is a need to ground the concept, and establish more communication between higher education institutions, and (2) institutions must start to implement the necessary infrastructure to promote corporate entrepreneurship and to identify potential intra-entrepreneurs.