Why Every Company Should Have an Intrapreneur

We read a lot about entrepreneurs—innovative and creative people who start companies and build them from the ground up. Entrepreneurs are self-starters, take initiative and get excited about launching and growing their own companies. But how can you hire someone with that mindset and skill set to help grow your company?

The answer is to foster intrapreneurship within your organization. Branding expert William Arruda defines an intrapreneur as someone who demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit within an organization.

What is an intrapreneur?

While an entrepreneur often raises capital and faces risk of launching a new venture, an intrapreneur is an employee who has access to an established company's resources and has the freedom to develop a new idea or project, regardless of the department they work for.

Although the term "intrapreneur" was not coined until 1978, one of the earliest examples of intrapreneurship is the creation of the Post-it Note in 1974.

Under a policy that allowed employees to spend 15% of their work time developing their own projects, two 3M engineers teamed up to create the now-ubiquitous little sticky notes.

Spencer Silver developed a light sticky adhesive a few years earlier, but had yet to come up with a practical application for it. That all changed after his 3M colleague Arthur Fry’s lightbulb moment, when bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal during choir rehearsal.

The two men combined their ideas in the 3M lab to create Post-it Notes, a pad of small squares that could stick to a page and easily be removed and even reposted elsewhere without leaving a residue. Today, there are more than 4,000 different Post-it® products.

5 reasons why every company should have an intrapreneur

With all the changes the pandemic has caused, smart companies need to embrace the idea of intrapreneurship more than ever before. Here are five reasons why every company should have an intrapreneur.

1. Builds engagement

Since the shutdowns of the early months of the pandemic, many employees have been working from home. It's easy to feel disengaged from company cultures and goals without face-to-face meetings and conversations around the water cooler.

This complacency can be costing you. According to research by Gallup, disengaged team members have 37% higher absenteeism, 18% lower productivity, and 15% lower profitability.

However, a company that promotes intrapreneurship can reward independent work while embracing company values.

2. Rewards creativity

When you hire a new team member, you look for someone with innovative ideas and passion. Yet even the best of hires can get bogged down with the to-do list that comes with any job. An intrapreneurship program can keep that spark alive.

In an interview with Newsweek in 1985, Steve Jobs said that his Apple Macintosh team was a group of intrapreneurs who were "going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company." His comment refers to the creative period when he and Steve Wozniak started Apple in the garage of his Los Altos, California house.

Trusting your employees to "go back to the garage" can mean great things for your company's success.

3. Builds the future

Intrapreneurship combines the entrepreneurial mindset with the infrastructure that is needed to support growth. 

When you embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of your employees, you will be rewarded with new ideas for your products and services. Here’s a great example: When given 20% of their paid work week time to imagine and develop new ideas, Google employees created Gmail, AdSense, and Google Maps. These products, as we know, became wildly successful.

4. Solves problems

There is no one-size-fits-all intrapreneur, but you often can spot people with this mindset by the way they tackle problems.

In an interview on intrapreneurship with Deloitte, Andy Goldstein, co-founder and managing director of Deloitte Digital, said his ideas for SoftCity as an intrapreneur in 2006 were initially rejected by his company’s executive committee. 

"However, I was able to convince the CEO to become a sponsor for the project,” Goldstein said. “He pushed the idea until we finally got a small budget. I'm certain that my idea would not have been implemented if the CEO has not been absolutely committed to it."

5. Embraces change

Over the past year, we've all learned a thing or two about responding to change. Maybe you’ve had to pivot to online services that didn’t even exist before, for example. How a company responds to change can determine its growth.

Beth Comstock, author of Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity and the Power of Change, wrote that many companies unwittingly create an "an imagination gap—a dark place where possibility and options for the future go to die."

Intrapreneurs are change agents. They not only create change, but they model change for others in the company.

How can you build intrapreneurship into your company?

So how can you build intrapreneurship into your company? It's really a matter of communicating  the value of innovative thinking. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Host regular brainstorming sessions

A study by the University of Phoenix and Harris Poll found that more than one-third of working adults seek opportunities to put their entrepreneurial mindset to work at their job. Create a supportive atmosphere that encourages idea-sharing and cooperation. Here are a few ideas on how to do that:

• Offer personality tests as part of the employee onboarding process. Why? Personality tests give valuable insight into an employee’s habits, needs and strengths after hiring. By making personality tests a standard part of the employee onboarding process, you’ll have a better ability to develop the employees job on how to excel within the organization. 

• Change your pay structure. When used strategically, certain types of payment can encourage employee creativity. Consider using a pay structure that rewards employees for both quality and quantity of work. Reward people for going above their typical job duties and beyond and taking calculated risks.

• Offer rewards-even non-monetary ones. Everyone wants to feel special. Rewards are an essential form of positive feedback for intrapreneurial behaviors. It can be as simple as a special callout at the next meeting. A free lunch, a gift certificate for a massage, car wash, etc. Choose rewards that are both intrinsic and extrinsic to encourage intrapreneurs to thrive in your culture

2. Give employees time to be creative

Remember the 3M policy that spawned the Post-it Note? How can you give your employees opportunities to be creative outside of their regular duties? Creative thinking comes in different ways to different people. Be alert to what produces results and be willing to be flexible.

3. Avoid micromanaging

Watch that you're not undermining intrapreneurial efforts by stepping in too soon and too often to comment or adjust things. Be open to new ideas and reward those who come up with them. But also know when to step back and wait.

4. Encourage a healthy sense of competition

Incentives never hurt when it comes to getting new concepts off the back burner and into the light of day. You can capture the attention of your budding intrapreneurs with public recognition and awards, promotions, or bonuses.

Conclusion

The path to intrapreneurship may not be a quick and easy one. Some team members may even feel reluctant with out-of-the-box thinking if they’re not accustomed to it. That's okay. After all, not everyone is not an intrapreneur.

Instead of focusing on a timeline or a specific result, just work on creating an atmosphere that supports creativity. Then see where it takes you.