6 Drivers for Intrapreneurs and Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I am giving a workshop on intrapreneurship next week and as I am doing some research, I decided to update this post and ask for more input on the drivers for intrapreneurs – and innovation in general.

If you wonder what the term, intrapreneur, means the American Heritage Dictionary in 1992 acknowledged this as “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.

Entrepreneurs are driven by passion, an urge to execute on their ideas and the chance to strike gold. Intrapreneurs do not have quite the same personal reasons for what they do. Yet they still have to be in an environment where they can bring on innovation that makes …

What is Innovation? (It’s Not Creativity)

by Stefan Lindegaard

This older post is a response to the many comments on my recent post: Don’t Confuse Creativity with Innovation

Innovation. Just the word or term itself is enough to start heated discussions. I experienced this once more as I got some interesting comments from Scott Berkun and Ralph Kerle in response to my Why CEO’s Don’t Get Innovation post in BusinessWeek.

One of Scott Berkun’s comments went like this “If we dropped the i-word, or at least attempted to define it, I think we’d get to the core of all this much faster.” This comment builds further on an interesting article, Good Beats Innovative Nearly Every Time, in which Scott urges us to loose usage of the word innovation.

I appreciate Scott’s comments as …

Are You A Troublemaker?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I really like this ”essay” that David Nordfors wrote a few years ago and I often use it at my talks and workshops. I like to see the smiles that people put up as they relate to it : – )

“When someone tries to innovate within a traditional organization,
few will understand what he/she is doing,
but everybody will understand who is a trouble-maker.

After the innovation has been embraced by the organization,
few will remember who started it,
but everybody will remember who was a trouble-maker.

This is the dilemma encountered by many intrapreneurs -
they risk punishment for success.”

Credit: David Nordfors, Stanford…

What is Open Innovation? Crowdsourcing? User innovation? Co-Creation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Many people ask what open innovation is. I suggest that you view open innovation as a philosophy or a mindset that you should embrace within your organization. In a more practical definition, open innovation is about bridging internal and external resources and act on those opportunities. The value proposition (better innovation to market faster) this gives companies that get it right is simply too good to miss out on.

I also like this quote from Henry Chesbrough; “Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology”

This still leaves three other questions:

What is crowdsourcing? Wikipedia states that …

People First, Processes Next, Then Ideas

by Stefan Lindegaard

As I am getting ready for the Intrapreneurship conference in Paris next week, I found this older post and decided to re-post it here on 15inno. I hope you will enjoy it.

The chief thing you as an innovation leader must realize is that when it comes to making innovation happen, people matter more than ideas.

Take a moment to think about that. Many innovation initiatives fail miserably because their leaders don’t understand this simple fact. In fact, it is actually more important to have A-grade people than it is to have a slew of A-grade ideas because A-grade people can take a B-grade idea – or perhaps even a C-grade idea – and turn it into a successful reality. B-grade people, on the other …

The Careers of Innovation Leaders and Intrapreneurs

by Stefan Lindegaard

Intrapreneurship is a hot topic for me at the moment. I will be moderating an InnoChat on this on Nov 1 and I will be speaking on the intersection of open innovation and intrapreneurship at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Paris on Dec 13.

As a way to tie this together and bring even more attention to intrapreneurship, I will publish a series of new and older posts on entrepreneurship over the coming months. Here we go with an older post in which I look into the careers of innovation leaders and intrapreneurs.

I have previously argued that companies need two kinds of people to make innovation initiatives successful. They need innovation leaders who focus on building the internal platform required to develop organizational innovation capabilities. …

5 Reasons Companies Should Forget About Radical Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Radical innovation is too difficult for most companies and they should play it safer when it comes to innovation. You can read why I think so below – and you can get a few ideas how to do it should you decide to give radical innovation a try.

First of all, let me say that I define radical innovation as projects that had an identified team and budget, and were perceived as having the potential to offer either

• new to the world performance features
• significant (5-10x) improvement in known
  features
• significant (30-50%) reduction in cost

The definition is developed by the Radical Innovation Group which works hard to establish innovation as a management discipline. They know a lot about radical innovation.

Most companies should forget …

Is Corporate Venture Dead? Is Open Innovation the New Thing?

by Stefan Lindegaard

NOTE: I just had another great visit in Silicon Valley and one thing I picked up this time is the surge of corporate venture like initiatives in the area. I met with several such units and I was pleased to learn that they work on a combined platform of corporate venture and open innovation activities.

This was one of my conclusion when I first published this blog post almost two years ago and my visit in Silicon Valley is why I am re-posting it. Let me know what you think.

————————

Once upon a time, we had many corporate venture units that invested in external projects as well as in internal projects from the corporate groups that they belonged to.

The number of units declined …

When Good Laughs Inspire Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Have you ever thought that bringing people together on innovation is like hearding cats? Cheryl Perkins, founder of InnovationEdge made me laugh when she included this video in a presentation she gave a few years ago.

How do we change people’s behaviour? Thefuntheory.com is a site that is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

The site has several fun and inspiring videos. This is one of my favourites.

Tom Fishbourne makes some great cartoons. I think this one shows that internal forces often are the worst …

You Always Have to Sell Innovation!

by Stefan Lindegaard

As an innovation leader or intrapreneur, you always have something to sell. In the end it is a product or a service, but during the development of a revenue-generator, you have to sell a vision to internal and external stakeholders.

You communicate that vision by:
•   Developing a value proposition that can be adapted for various stakeholders, and then
•   Capturing the very essence of the value proposition in a short and brief elevator pitch that focuses on the recipients of the message.

In Geoffrey Moore’s classic book, Crossing the Chasm, he provides the term “value proposition” as a way to choose from among what is presented to us for consideration. Options include choosing nothing at all, if there are no choices that improve our …