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...

Leaders, Prepare For A Networked Organization

What a company knows is inside the heads of its people, and distributing this knowledge has always been a challenge. Yet, now more than ever, being able to leverage a company’s collective knowledge and experience through virtual and face-to-face networks and communities is critical to innovation. So why do such efforts fail so frequently? Here are some of the reasons I’ve identified as I’ve worked with companies on this issue:

1. Time and skills

Many of us simply do not have the time or skills to network and build relationships. Leaders, you need to give your people time to acquire networking skills and the time to invest in and maintain relationships.

2. Focus

A community will only work if it connects people who share a common experience, passion, interest, affiliation...

Open Innovation And Intrapreneurship For Small And Medium Sized Companies

I have been asked to present my views on how small and medium-sized companies can move to the next level by implementing open innovation and intrapreneurship.

I am still working on the presentation, but below you can see some bullet-points I plan to include in the 3 hour-long session. What do you think? Am I missing something important?

Besides hearing your comments here, it would be great to get out and share this with other companies, organizations and event organizers around the world. Let me know if you would like to discuss this

• The challenge. Growing a startup is very much about executing on a great product, idea or technology. However, as the company grows focus tend to shift towards control rather than keeping the visionary thinking and...

Startups Are Overrated: Intrapreneurs Are Better Bets

Startups are great because they create growth and lots of jobs so let’s pour lots of private and government money into programs that create more startups. Entrepreneurs and startups kick ass!

This is the common wisdom in most countries. Does it hold? I do not think so and an article in Borsen, a leading business daily in Denmark provided some interesting facts that support my view on this.

In short, the article argued that gazelle companies – defined as companies that have created growth each of the last four years and in total have more than doubled their revenues in that time span – create more jobs than other company categories. This is not much of a surprise as growth companies almost per definition need people to...

The full picture of innovation: Observations from Hewlett-Packard, Doblin and IDEO

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with Paul Campbell, who is a true intrapreneur at Hewlett-Packard.  Paul developed five internal startups that generated nearly $1B in revenue — a rare accomplishment, indeed.

When I first met Paul, he was Vice-President in HP’s Voodoo Gaming PC business. We talked about what characterizes intrapreneurs, and Paul said that an intrapreneur must have the ability to see and pursue possibilities by piecing together innovations across three or more business functions simultaneously.

Paul emphasized that successful intrapreneurship requires this level of innovation to differentiate it from standard business growth initiatives. This contrasts sharply with most people who are accustomed to innovate one thing at a time.  He explained that this is true, in part, because many leaders understand...

Making change happen

Our current business climate brings a lot of change at the corporate as well as the personal level. They also bring out career development issues that often evolve around what you might call the “professional midlife crisis”. Besides the financial turmoil we currently have, such a crisis can also be caused by situations such as these:

•  Your company is not focused enough on innovation to offer you the types of exciting innovation leadership or intrapreneurial opportunities you desire. •  You have plateaued in your company with no obvious next step available to you that will move you forward on the career path you desire. •  Having defined your personal values, you realize they do not match those of your employer. •   You do not have...

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. This is work on the strategic and tactical level.

Innovation leaders are often also involved as coaches, facilitators and sponsors for the second group required for innovation; the intrapreneurs who turn ideas and research into real products and services that move the business forward.

For your information, intrapreneurship is defined as the practice of using entrepreneurial skills without taking on the risks or accountability associated with entrepreneurial activities i.e. starting your own business. Intrapreneurs are employees who behave as entrepreneurs, even though they have the resources and capabilities of the larger firm to draw...

Defeating the corporate antibodies

Change is frightening to many elements inside the typical organization. Change threatens people’s power, their status, their egos, and, in some situations, even their jobs. Change can make someone’s expertise obsolete and thereby make them obsolete as well. Because people are afraid of change, innovation efforts often cause the eruption of corporate antibodies that fight to kill innovation and maintain the status quo.

The factors that cause angst within a closed system of innovation may prove to be even more threatening when a company shifts toward open innovation. Executives and managers may feel they can control the degree of change and shape it to their own needs as long as everything is happening within the organization. But start to bring outside forces in and it’s a...

TBX – an approach to developing the innovation culture

Having been involved in several efforts on developing the innovation culture within companies, I have learned that you need to work with three organizational approaches.

I call this the TBX approach:

•  T (Top Down) – Get the executives onboard and make them personally committed to the innovation activities. Without executive support, no change occurs.

•  B (Bottom Up) – Value creation begins with people, one by one, team by team. Nothing happens unless you get the employees engaged and involved. Take ideas, feedback and other input from employees seriously. If ideas just seem to run down a sinkhole and never to re-emerge or if leaders are not able to commit resources to any ideas, you will lose the trust of the employees.

•  X (Across) – The biggest...

Corporate business plan competitions – an initiative to identify intrapreneurs and create open innovation

You know that some people in your organization have the potential to drive innovation forward, but how do you identify them? And once you’ve found your potential “intrapreneurs,” how do you train them and support their success? The chief tool I recommend for this purpose is a corporate business plan competition.

Such competitions are patterned after the business plan competitions run by educational institutions such as MIT and Harvard Business School, but the idea has been successfully adapted for a corporate environment or even used to drive open innovation. Companies that have successfully used this strategy to foster intrapreneurship include Danfoss Ventures, an international leader in mechanical and electronic products and controls; Novozymes, the world leader in bio-innovations; and computer giant Hewlett-Packard.

Corporate business plan competitions can…

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