Intrapreneurs - the true drivers of innovation

Intrapreneurs tap into the spirit of entrepreneurialism to innovate, create value and provide the intellectual spark to empower business transformation. While avoiding the high risk of starting a new business, intrapreneurs provide an increasingly essential skill, and for individuals, a satisfying career path. Organizations need to nurture and celebrate the skills and efforts of intrapreneurs to drive transformation and retain talent - read on for a Big Think post highlights on this topic...

Intrapreneurs and the entrepreneurial spirit

The word intrapreneur was coined in the late 70s to describe employees who act like an entrepreneur within an established organization. Through what marketing strategist Dorie Clark calls “entrepreneurial side ventures,” intrapreneurs develop original solutions, processes, or products. They can then sell their ideas to the higher-ups, use those innovations to motivate for change, and even transform entire industries.

“Intrapreneurship offers creative, driven people the autonomy to succeed and organizations the innovations they need to thrive”

“For many innovative-minded people, becoming an intrapreneur may not only be a responsible career path, one that still offers a sense of control, satisfaction, and ambition attainment. It may be the superior option to risker entrepreneurial path where 'failing fast' may lead to severe personal financial outcomes.” - Big Think, Smart Skills, Oct 27, 2021

In his book Driving Innovation from Within, innovation consultant Kaihan Krippendorff argues that true innovation doesn’t originate with lone mavericks taking on tradition and winning. It comes from the collaboration of institutions and employees.

“This path of self-directed, employee-generated innovation has historically been far more prevalent than we understood. Indeed, the innovative ideas of employees have done more to shape society than those of entrepreneurs.” - Kaihan Krippendorff, Author

Pushing the boundaries

While pop culture is awash with the stories of entrepreneurs who struck it rich, the successes of intrapreneurs typically go unsung.

“Even people who are hailed as great innovators, such as Steve Jobs, did not actually invent much of anything—but had the vision and marketing skills to make existing ideas more enticing, and to make other people want to buy them,” writes Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, CIO at ManpowerGroup. The cavalcade of Apple engineers and designers whose names appear on the company’s patents bear this out.

Then there’s Ken Kutaragi, father of the Sony PlayStation and textbook intrapreneur. Odd as it may sound today, Sony Corporation once held no interest in video games. The company considered them a childish fad. But through his connections at Nintendo, Kutaragi began taking on gaming side-projects: first a sound chip for the Super Nintendo and then a disk-based system add-on for the console.

Nintendo later killed this add-on project, but Kutaragi convinced Norio Ohga, then CEO of Sony Corporation, to adopt the project and develop the system as a standalone. And the PlayStation was born.

What’s interesting about Kutaragi’s story is that he represents a single link in a chain of intrapreneurs that built the modern video games industry.

The first video game cabinets were commercial recreations of side projects developed by university engineers, students, and technicians. This is similar to the first digital camera, designed by intrapreneur and engineer Steven Sasson in 1975. (Photo: George Eastman Museum)

Today, the video games industry is worth billions of dollars, and in North America, it has surpassed the film and music industries combined in revenue.

Fostering intrapreneurs in house

The intrapreneurial path is only accessible if organizations are willing to cultivate it. By now, the financial advantages should be obvious. By funding an intrapreneur’s product, policy, or application, the organization shares in any potential profit, and because the intrapreneur is already an employee, the expense of innovation is likely far less than if the company had to seek it elsewhere. Perhaps one reason more organizations don’t cultivate such a spirit is that they fear losing employees who will strike it solo. But research suggests that such a worry is unfounded.

A Deloitte survey found millennials to be more loyal if they felt in control of their career and their organizations supported their leadership ambitions. Respondents also favored employers who demonstrated a strong sense of purpose beyond financial success and creating meaning in work. And a study out of the University of Birmingham showed a positive correlation between autonomy and job satisfaction.

"Today’s employees seek prosocial, meaningful, and innovative careers with a sense of autonomy."

It’s simply the popular perception that entrepreneurialism is the only place where such work can be reliably found. If organizations want to tap into this wellspring of talent, they need to provide opportunities for their people to build their capabilities within a culture of immersive learning. They need to pave the way for intrapreneurs.