Intrapreneurship Success Introduction

Overview from a Successful Serial Intrapreneur

The word, in-tra-pre-neur (In tre-pre-nur) did not exist in the dictionary until 1975-1980. The dictionary defines intrapreneur as “an employee of a large corporation who is given freedom and financial support to create new products, services, systems, etc, and [who] does not have to follow the corporation’s usual routine or protocols.” (Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1996, p.1001) This textbook definition is a little naive and simply not realistic within a typical large corporation.

Anyone who has worked in a large corporation knows that in most cases a rigid set of corporate rules, corporate standard operating procedures, and corporate policies exists for almost everything and anything. Yet, some enlightened corporations do allow an employee-intrapreneur limited freedom to pursue new ideas. To overcome the roadblocks of formal structure and a very slow moving corporate bureaucracy, the intrapreneur must convince senior management that the new, “out of the box” idea has merit, market, and would be both profitable and synergistic to the corporate mission.

An intrapreneur is really an entrepreneur who has less risk in a venture. He also has much less control of when, or even whether, the product will be launched. Being an intrapreneur takes a unique set of skills beyond creativity, including being willing to take some risks at sharing and pushing an unique idea, having the perseverance to wait for senior management’s approval to create and launch the product or service, and the drive to see it through to fruition, no matter what.

The terms and basic concepts of both intrapreneuring and intrapreneurship existed in corporations for decades before the management consultant Gifford Pinchot(1985) made it famous in his book Intrapreneuring. Apple’s Chairman, Stephen Jobs popularized the term “intrapreneurship” in his article in the September 30, 1985 issue of Newsweek, in which he said, “The Macintosh team was what is commonly known as intrapreneurship-only a few years before the term was coined – a group of people going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company.”

Norman Macrae (The Economist, 1976) predicted a number of trends in business – one of them being “that dynamic corporations of the future should simultaneously be trying alternative ways of doing things in competition within themselves”. Macrae reaffirmed that idea in another article (The Economist in 1982).

Author John Naisbett (1986) cited “intrapreneurship” as a way for established businesses to find new markets and new products in his book, “Re-Inventing the Corporation” The concept was established enough that in 1990 Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School discussed in her book, “When Giants Learn to Dance” for intrapreneurial development as a key factor in ensuring the survival of the company.

Tom Nies, CEO of Cincom has noted that “A key element of intrapreneurship is the ability of a company to support expedited decision-making processes.” Nies continued “Intrapreneurs above all else thrive on the freedom.”

PR1ME Computer Inc’s growth is a real world successful case study of a firm that used Intrapreneurship to help them grow from a small OTC listed company to the Number 1 performing company listed on the NYSE in just five years.