Intrapreneurship is at best truly engaging, and simultaneously an effective way for organizations to address the toughening global competition. As always, Together We CreAct!
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi this is Henrik Totterman, thanks for listening to Radio LeadX3M. Today I will speak about intrapreneurship, which basically signifies the behavior of an entrepreneur while being employed by someone else.
Several of our international corporate discussion partners are actively implementing means of entrepreneurial management, and mentoring programs for internal entrepreneurship. Intrapreneurs are increasingly regarded as disruptors and change agents, who assist their employers by their innovative behavior in overcoming increasingly global competition. Our discussion partners lead, for instance, large healthcare, technology, education, or mobile telecom companies that are often seen as international forerunners in their respective industries. Their renewal pressure is continuous, at the same time as their organizations are typically slow to change.
The goal for the corporate leadership is naturally to ensure continuous success, by fine-tuning existing business and encourage their organizations to implement change and innovate in line with the set strategic objectives. At best the organizations are characterized by orderly result orientation, which is governed by an all encompassing and effective management system. This is at least how it should be on a sunny day, when risks are accounted for and uncertainty has not caused any major surprises.
Observe that intrapreneurs do not operate in a vacuum from the rest of the organization. They have a particular role of searching and creating new business models for innovation and commercial growth, in collaboration with others. Nurturing something new or renewing the existing, and implementing these requires extensive teamwork, and creative and successful reuse of corporate resources. Foremost, success requires internal approval and an influential internal sponsor. This role is best suited for a senior leader, whose decisions are advised by a small group of internal and external experts.
Entrepreneurship suites all types and sizes of organizations, regardless of industry. I am actually often amused how surprised executives are when we unleash the creative and entrepreneurial capabilities of their employees. Typically all it takes is learning some basic skills and receiving positive encouragement from leadership. The key is to mentor potential intrapreneurs to frame problems, stating and testing assumptions, and learning from failures together with others, while of course aiming for breakthrough success.
For organizations to succeed, they need to offer true entrepreneurial freedom, which is encouraged and steered primarily by means and measures typical for entrepreneurship. Corporate performance metrics are good, but they are also challenging, especially at the early stages of intrapreneurship.
Its of course critical to agree specific milestones in advance and bind any additional financing to these. Once that is done, then the intrapreneurs must have the responsibility, but also the freedom to use corporate resources, business models, processes, and systems to further new business.
As a mentor and architect of corporate entrepreneurship, I see it as essential to consider how such programs incorporate problem based learning and measure progress. For instance, methods and tools that we use challenges intrapreneurs to consider and discover actively, and to report findings to their mentors and sponsoring corporate leadership.
Enabling intrapreneurship can be key in aligning organizational activities and overcome increasing global competition. I have seen this first hand myself. This why I want to wrap-up by recommending you to consider how intrapreneurship can benefit the success of your organization.
We at LeadX3M are excited to tell more about intrapreneurship, and eager to assist in scoping and implementing a program in your organization.
For additional reading, please see David Whitney's insightful article on practical Transformative Intrapreneurship.
#Business transformation #new business #business renewal #Intrapreneurship #entrepreneurship #creactiveleaders
