Intrapreneurship: Creating New Ventures within Established Companies

I have a passion for intrapreneurship – the process in which employees act as entrepreneurs within established companies and start new ventures. Thus, I was intrigued when Paul Sloane asked this question in the 15inno by Stefan Lindegaard group on LinkedIn:

“Examples of internal start-ups. Do you know of any examples of corporate internal start-up ventures? I am working with a corporation that wants to fund a number of internal start-up businesses. We would like to hear of others experiences please. Who is doing this well?”

Danfoss Ventures have much experience on this. One of their vehicles for identifying and developing new ventures is a corporate business plan competition called Man on the Moon which I helped create some years ago. You can read further in this article: Corporate business plan competitions

The topic of intrapreneurship is on the agenda at the IBM Impact event this May and they have asked me to give a talk. IBM Impact Better Results with Intrapreneurship

You can find great learnings from IBM and their Emerging Business Opportunities program in this article from Fast Company: Building a Better Skunk Works. You should also read Building Breakthrough Businesses Within Established Organizations which is a great article by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble.

In our LinkedIn discussion, Heinz Essmann pointed us to Metropolitan Cover2go – a small division of Metropolitan Life tasked with developing insurance products to address the severely under-insured sector of South Africa’s lower-income market. Essmann added a couple of lessons based on this example of intrapreneurship:

1) Focus; providing clear objectives for the group to pursue. If they are tasked with conquering all, then they will more than likely conquer nothing.

2) Diversity; Mavericks will be able to start the business and build networks and relationships, but you need builders and finishers to follow ideas through. The team must have a range of skills and personalities to be successful. Sending a bunch of only the most creative people will only deliver great ideas, but no implementation and, therefore, little or no revenue.

Margaret Manson mentioned that Deloitte Digital in Australia works with external entrepreneurs to commercialise ideas or they sell prototypes off. Examples that emerged out of Deloitte include: j-Mango (ticketing), a secure authorisation system for credit cards and a company that focus on online betting.

Darren Coomber brought our attention to Team UpStart which operates an environment where client firms send up to six teams of three-to-five budding entrepreneurs that live and work together to build prototypes, develop business plans, and prove their vision. Among such programs, I also like the Certificate in Entrepreneurial Leadership program offered by the Technical University of Denmark.

Lots of  links in this post. I hope you find some inspiration and that you will share your own insights and examples on intrapreneurship…