Strengthening entrepreneurship and establishing intrapreneurship
TOM SPIKE helps you to develop and promote intrapreneurship in your company.
How many creative ideas are already in your company without you knowing about them? How much further could you develop your company if you could use these ideas and thus decisively advance your company’s ability to innovate? The intrapreneurship method, which has already been used many times, can help here. It gives creative minds a framework in which they can test and scale their own ideas without the risk of the employee giving up their job. There is a particular opportunity for internal innovation if intrapreneurship is desired and encouraged by management. The larger the company, the more important these structures are.
Although one might think that the term intrapreneurship has only emerged in recent years as a derivative of the hyped concept of entrepreneurship, it actually first appeared in 1978. It has been the subject of research and further development ever since. Derived from “intracooperate” and “entrepreneurship”, it describes an employee who sees themselves as an “entrepreneur within the company”. In other words, he adopts the way of thinking and acting of an entrepreneur, even though he works as an employee. In particular, innovation-driven thinking, intrinsic motivation, a certain willingness to take risks and assertiveness, even in adverse circumstances, are preferred characteristics of these employees.
In order to sustainably promote intrapreneurs in your company, it is first necessary to discover the interested employees. It is important to find out which employees enjoy generating new ideas. These employees then receive support through suitable measures to further develop their ideas. You should keep in mind that employees are not entrepreneurs. Therefore, support must also be offered in the areas of networking, risk assessment and other entrepreneurial skills. This enables employees not only to develop their own ideas, but also to test them out and implement them if necessary, thus generating innovation internally.
TOM SPIKE helps you to develop and promote intrapreneurship in your company.
A concrete example of such an approach is the “Innovation Kickbox” from Adobe. This is a physical box that contains, among other things, a concrete step-by-step guide from brainstorming to design. It also contains creative tools such as a notebook or post-its, as well as chocolate, a coffee voucher and, depending on the company, a credit card filled with a small amount of start-up capital. It is intended to help the employee to cast an idea in a concrete form, start initial tests and provide instructions on how the idea provider can make their suggestion heard in a suitable place.
Companies are increasingly trying to buy in innovation from outside. For example, by acquiring small, flexible start-ups that are integrated into the company. A valuable approach with pitfalls. This is because it is extremely difficult to anchor good ideas from outside. It is often overlooked that a large number of creative approaches exist within the company. However, these remain under the radar because there is no suitable structure to allow these ideas to mature and make them heard in the right place.
Innovative ideas that come from employees, on the other hand, have a head start that can hardly be made up by external innovation. An intrapreneur knows his area within the company very well. They can develop improvements, including ideas for new business areas, new target groups or even subsidiaries, which are only possible thanks to their internal view of the company. He knows bottlenecks in detail and can develop tailor-made innovation strategies in the right environment. It is therefore worth promoting intrapreneurship in a targeted manner in order to leverage and utilize this valuable wealth of knowledge that already exists in your company today.
Good intrapreneurs can be discovered and developed with the right structured methods. Just as with entrepreneurship, there are people whose interests and preferences are more suited to becoming an intrapreneur. The task now is to identify suitable employees and give them enough freedom to enable innovation.
Important entrepreneurial characteristics of the intrapreneur are:
Various measures help to initiate the promotion of suitable candidates.
An institutional framework must be created for this. At the beginning, the idea of intrapreneurship must be introduced to employees through targeted training. Once the principles and objectives are known, it must be possible for employees to regularly discuss ideas and develop them further, for example in the form of a regular ideas consultation or creative workshops to develop innovative ideas. It is also very important that a culture is created in the company in which ideas can be expressed without fear and are not immediately stifled. On the management side, this requires a sensitive approach and further training in this area.
A strong division of labor often leads to topics being handed over to supposed experts. This poses a risk for new ideas. After all, no one will drive an idea forward with as much passion as the idea provider. Leaving the development of innovative solutions to (suitable) employees is therefore an important step.
Intrapreneurship must be intrinsically motivated. However, in order to maintain and promote this motivation, further external incentives can be helpful. These can be financial, but must not be limited to this. The intrapreneur is primarily driven by his idea itself and the prospect of its implementation. Therefore, a culture of appreciation must be created by the management and at the same time the fear of mistakes and possible failure must be taken away.
The will is good. Competence and credibility help. The Master Class provides methods for intrapreneurs and intrapreneurship.
During the further development and testing phase of the idea, it is advisable to provide resources in the form of advice, coaching, funding and, above all, time. Under no circumstances should the intrapreneur be forced to work overtime to pursue their idea. Managers should also provide uncomplicated access to financial support, expert knowledge and certain freedoms. It is up to the company management to provide the necessary framework for management.
It is immensely important for the innovation process to create the freest possible communication, at least within the support program for intrapreneurship. If a decentralized company structure allows a manager to delegate decisions to the person with the most knowledge on the subject, this strengthens the company’s innovative capacity. This does not necessarily have to be the person formally responsible. It is also beneficial for the innovation process if employees can approach the manager with whom they feel their idea is best placed. Hierarchies should not play a role here. Promoting cooperation between departments and interdisciplinary projects is also conducive to innovation. New insights and different perspectives on the same problem lead to new ways of thinking and creative ideas for solutions.
Intrapreneurship means adopting a completely new perspective and recognizing, promoting and valuing entrepreneurial thinking throughout the company. There are many employees in every company who are able and willing to engage with the topic of intrapreneurship. They want to develop their own ideas for the benefit of the company. It is the task of the company to create structures that enable them to use their entrepreneurial thinking in the interests of the company. In doing so, they value the motivation and commitment of the intrapreneur and decisively strengthen the internal innovative power.
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Entrepreneurship increases self-responsible action in the organization beyond pure employee activity. Innovation is almost unthinkable without entrepreneurship. Other areas of the company also benefit from increased employee commitment. TOM SPIKE has guided specialists and managers in numerous companies through to greater entrepreneurship and personal responsibility. In individual coaching, in broader-based management development and in targeted innovation projects.
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