What is intrapreneurship, and how can you cultivate it at your company?

Our culture owes many of its greatest successes to innovating entrepreneurs — women and men who took chances and launched brilliant additions to their respective business landscapes.

This focus on modern ideas, and the original thinking that shapes them, has gained popularity. Small businesses are often thought of as the epicenter of this innovation, but established enterprises hold similar potential for development. It’s now a skill company leaders search for in their employees, desiring to harness the power of a creative workforce. This is how companies improve, by supporting the ingenuity of the people dedicated to their causes.

The rising term for this phenomenon is coined intrapreneurship. Aptly named, intrapreneurs exist within established companies and hold the potential to advance their workplaces into previously unknown territories.

Let’s take a look at why fostering intrapreneurship within a company can benefit everyone involved, and what successful intrapreneurship looks like. 

Intrapreneurship: A powerful driver for business growth

Intrapreneurs are not starting a new business in a competitive market, rather they are internal entrepreneurs who work within the structures of an established company. They are the hardworking individuals who constantly find ways to innovate and improve their roles, the quality of work, and sometimes their entire entity.

Similar skills are required for both the entrepreneur and the intrapreneur, including leadership, innovation and adaptability. But the intrapreneur isn’t pressured to take on the financial risk associated with traditional entrepreneurship. Their ideas better the conditions of their work, and their employer must be willing to take on the risk to encourage and implement their ideas.

However, both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs share the commonly termed entrepreneurial spirit. Self-described intrapreneurs aren’t afraid to shake up their surroundings, constantly looking for new ways to change how their workplace is run. They are people who work late into the night, driven and passionate about their newest project.

These individuals are the engine to company success, the drivers of the new and exciting ideas that hold the potential to reshape and revolutionize your industry. 

The types of potential intrapreneurs in your company

It’s quite easy to find potential intrapreneurs within your organization. Look for the employees who are always suggesting new ideas, asking questions about how the company operates, and shadowing fellow employees to learn more. Great intrapreneurs take initiative, finding success in leadership roles where they can truly make an impact.

While these are common characteristics that unite almost all intrapreneurs, there are three general types of intrapreneurs that you may come across within your company:

1. Creators

Creators are quite easy to spot. They’re the employees who are always looking for more efficient ways to complete tasks, switching things up to increase productivity.

They may be the people suggesting new solutions to problems, likely already formulating new plans before their first has even been implemented. Creators are optimistic, chock-full of ways to improve the organization.

2. Doers

On the implementation side, doers are great at taking ideas and running with them, finding ways to get a job done. Doers excel at bridging the gap between idea origination and actual results. Task-oriented and dedicated, they are the step by step force leading to project completion.

3. Implementers

Implementers see the big picture, they are goal-oriented and productive, and work well under pressure to accomplish the task at hand. They stop at nothing to execute the plan and are often responsible for the innovative idea’s implementation.

These intrapreneurs, and many who stand outside of these borders, are already within your company. Embrace this intrapreneurship, and implement organizational practices to bring your own intrapreneurs into a creative, supportive environment.  

How successful intrapreneurship benefits business

Encouraging new ideas and perspectives is essential to the development of your business. Innovative plans facilitate change and hold the promise of a smoother and more efficient system within your company. In the quickly changing and rapidly innovating digital world, surviving and remaining relevant is as simple as encouraging intrapreneurship.

Better still, intrapreneurs are intimately familiar with the operating of your business. They are optimally placed to notice the pitfalls and issues you may be overlooking. When intrapreneurs take on more responsibilities within the company, they use their understanding of fellow employees’ needs and business operations to implement useful and strategic innovation.

When entities stifle intrapreneurship, creating an unsupportive, restrictive work environment where bright ideas aren’t brought to light, intrapreneurs may resign. Your company needs these forward thinkers — they are crucial to growth and success.  

Facilitating intrapreneurial culture at your company

It is in the best interest of every company to foster a culture of creativity, innovation and idea sharing. Sparking creativity is as easy as creating an open space for employees to share, knowing that their input is valued.

Google’s “20% time” initiative is an excellent example of company encouragement. For 20% of their workday, Google engineers focus on their passion projects. The results are now household names: AdSense, Gmail, Google maps and Google Earth.

Innovation is building within your employees, their potential is likely the reason you hired them in the first place. Supporting them in a culture of innovation may be the key to unlocking their inventive ideas and creating success within your industry. Evidence would argue it is your job within your company to support their excellence, benefiting their growth as well as the progress of your company.

Creating this intrapreneurial culture within your company should be the goal for any employer seeking business-wide success. Workplaces thrive when they are a testing ground for intrapreneurs, when the work is exciting for employees, and when your workers are passionate about their projects.