3 Reasons Why You Need an Intrapreneur

Created by Chris Shayan
Dec 01, 2015

Who's an Intrapreneur? We can have a look at American Heritage Dictionary for its definition:

in-tra-pre-neur (In¹tre-pre-nur) n. A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation 

Typically we used to call these people entrepreneurs, nonetheless, because they’re not entering into their own, work venture we refer to these employees as “intrapreneurs”, they are working within your company, thus the “intra” part.

To build your innovation engine, your company must excel at operationalizing ideas from your energized people who are willing to do everything they can to fight off internal resistance without creating chaos. This is your bench of corporate innovators: your intrapreneurs.

Find your intrapreneurs and Retain Them.

Vijay Govindarajan and Jatin Desai have noted in a Harvard Business Reviewblog post, there are certain characteristics that successful intrapreneurs share. I would like to review them:

  • Money is not their measurement. Intrapreneurs understand the economic drivers that allow the organization to succeed and are able to support this fundamental truth and not fight it. A non-intrapreneur is perpetually looking for non-economic ways to justify their own advancement and payment. An intrapreneur “gets it” and does their work in a way that shows the organization they are someone it can’t afford to lose. The money and advancement finds them.
  • Strategic Scanning. Intrapreneurs are constantly thinking about what is next, one step into the future. These passionate change agents are highly engaged, very clear, and visibly consistent in their work and interactions. They are not sitting around waiting for the world to change; they’re figuring out which part of the world is about to change, and they will arrive just in time to leverage their new insights. Learning is like oxygen to them.
  • They are “greenhousers.” When you share an idea to an intrapreneur, the idea never leaves them. It stayes within their mind in order to figure out how to make it work. When you see them next, they are likely to have grown the seed of an idea into a full-blown plan or they will have created an even better set of alternative plans in its stead.
  • Visual Thinking. Visual thinking is a combination of brainstorming, mind mapping, and design thinking. Only after an exciting insight do intrapreneurs seem able to formulate and visualize a series of solutions in their head—rarely do they formulate just one solution. 
  • They know how to pivot.  Intrapreneurs aren’t afraid to change course, nor do they fear failure. They've a confidence and courage that every step takes them closer to their ultimate goal. They celebrate opportunities for growth, even painful failed ones.
  • They behave authentically and with integrity. The intrapreneurs demonstrate the attributes of confidence and humility, not the maverick-like behavior often associated with successful corporate innovators. They all, however, exuded high self-awareness and sense of purpose.

Successful companies with their own innovation engines understand how to find, develop, and retain intrapreneurs. 

After knowing the traits of an intrapreneurs now it is time to knowThree Reasons Why You Need an Intrapreneur in your firm:

  1. Intrapreneurs are major contributors to increases in productivity within your company. Intrapreneurs take risks and find more effective ways to accomplish tasks. An intrapreneur, in the most basic sense, is a skilled problem solver that can take on important tasks within a company and get things done.
  2. Intrapreneurs are the drivers and change agents of innovation within your company. Intrapreneurs seek to provide solutions to unique market driven problems. They seek policies, technologies and application that resolve a barrier to productivity increases. Like the entrepreneur who starts a company with the goal of providing a good or service, the intrapreneur takes on a task within the company to increase the capacity of the company.
  3. An intrapreneur understands trends and keep your company one step ahead of competitors; they see where the company needs to go before anyone else. Any successful company must have a number of intraprenuers to see future trends and meet them before their competitors do. In this respect good intrapreneurs are the most important asset a company has.