Intrapreneurship: The Lost Grail of Innovation

Posted May 16, 2025

The term “intrapreneur” was coined in America inthe late seventies. Several senior executives of big corporations in Americaleft their jobs to start their own small businesses because the top bosses inthese corporations were not receptive to innovative ideas. The executivesturned entrepreneurs achieved phenomenal success in their new ventures. Some ofthem posed a threat to the corporations they left a few years ago. Such corporate brain drain isa world wide phenomenon and is not confined to the United States.Industrialists all over the world started devising ways and of stopping theflight of their brightest executives. In 1976 Norman Macras wrote in the LondonEconomist that successful big corporations should become ‘confederations ofentrepreneurs’.

Introduction to IP Traceback

Another historical explanation is the departure of many senior executives from their employment in the United States in the 1970s. It was because they did not feel appreciated by their superiors for their revolutionary ideas. Eventually, they started their businesses, giving tough competition to their previous employers.

This includes providing the necessary resources, such as funding, tools, and expertise, as well as creating structures that enable collaboration and communication across teams. Intrapreneurship, as an entrepreneurial approach within a large organization, comes with its unique set of challenges. Balancing the needs of their current role with the intrapreneurial project and dealing with resistance from colleagues are some common obstacles faced by intrapreneurs. These inspiring examples demonstrate the transformative impact intrapreneurs can have within their organizations. By identifying opportunities and leading projects, they not only improve company performance but also shape their industries’ future.

“I doubt people are choosing to go into a large company thinking they’re going to be an intrapreneur.
The reward should be explicitly based on achieving the pre-determined goals.
Many companies struggle with applying the concept of intrapreneurship into their daily routines due to high levels of defined tasks and schedules that deter opportunities for serendipity and for new ideas to be recognised.
Corporations must also secure short- turn profits in order to keep stock prices up and attract investors.

Unleashing the Entrepreneurial Spirit Within Every Employee

Even a potentially groundbreaking idea can be shunned by teams if it isn’t going to be profitable right away.
They see the entrepreneur as loner rather than a team player and as an eccentric who is interested in pet projects rather than in getting corporate work done.
That means, in part, reducing or restructuring middle management to limit the breakdown of communication that often makes employees feel disconnected.
Instead this resource covers the foundational disciplines such as customer research, business model design and user experience testing – always in the context of the goals that businesses care about.
It must also be about restructuring a company’s leadership to take those employees seriously, and a willingness to pivot when an employee discovers something transformative.

Genesis Grant offers $85,000 to these innovators to carry forward their projects. Apart from those characteristics inherent to large corporations that make entrepreneurship difficult is the need of most publically held ventures to show short-run profits. Established corporations thrive on short-run profits, the term intrapreneur was coined by they are an organisation’s measures of success. Corporations must also secure short- turn profits in order to keep stock prices up and attract investors. The team works on developing the idea without any approval or sanction from the organisation.

Entrepreneurship and Leadership go hand in hand.

“People know that when this person’s in the room, they’re going to have really good ideas,” Kelly says. “You’re driving culture change, you’re setting up new programs, you’re influencing, you’re meeting people, you’re identifying gaps throughout the organization, and then you’re finding ways to solve them,” Kelly says. Many of the key characteristics of a successful intrapreneur are traits a successful entrepreneur also has. You may be brought on for a short-term contract, have a small team or work solo, and collaborate with people from different departments to achieve your role. “At any company, there are lots of standard job descriptions, and then there are a lot of squishy, undefined needs,” Kelly says.

“Navigating the Entrepreneurial Journey: From Visionary to CEO”

Last, but not least, ispersistence, throughout the establishment of any new entrepreneurial venture,frustration and obstacles will occur. Only through the entrepreneur’spersistence will a new venture be created and successful commercializationresult. The intrapreneur must possessa fourth characteristic the ability to encourage teamwork and use amultidiscipline approach. To minimize the negative effect of any disruptioncaused, the entrepreneur must be a good diplomat.

“For many years, the corporate structure at 3M has beendesigned specifically to encourage young entrepreneurs to take an idea and runwith it. If they succeed, they can and do find themselves running their ownbusiness under the 3M umbrella. Smart organizations know this already and make sure thatthey create an environment where intrapreneurship is embraced, valued, andflourished. We all have heard about companies like 3M, or Google who becameposter children of intrapreneurship (although Google does not offer 20% time towork on passion projects anymore.) A distinction should be madebetween ‘intrapreneurs’ and ‘entrepreneurs’. First, an entrepreneur is anindependent businessman who bears full risks of his business whereas anintrapreneur is semi-independent and does not fully bear the risk of thebusiness he develops and operates.

A new product is rarely a success at the first attempt hence experimentation is encouraged and in the process failures tolerated. Intrapreneurial climate allows mistakes and failures in implementing innovative ideas. Such failures do not have a serious impact on the career prospects of intrapreneurial managers as failures are considered a part and parcel of establishing successful new products or ventures. Thus, intrapreneurs are inside entrepreneurs who follow the goal of the organization. Intrapreneurship is an example of motivation through job design, either formally or informally.

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The first written use of the terms ‘intrapreneur’, ‘intrapreneuring,’ and ‘intrapreneurship’ date from a paper written in 1978 by Gifford Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot. Perhaps, one of the few companies which had been practising the intrapreneurs concept, much before Pinchot propounded it was International Business Machines (IBM), the computer giant. It adopted the concept of Independent Business Units (I.B.U) by encouraging its own employees to promote industrial units. who is zion_moodie141

When it comes to entrepreneurship in the public sector, opinions are mixed. The public sector is often seen as a challenging environment for entrepreneurship due to its constant exposure to turbulence, making it a dynamic and complex place to operate. Research into intrapreneurship has been steadily growing since its inception. However, there’s a cautionary note from some researchers that intrapreneurship risks becoming a matter of luck if we don’t establish and understand its key dimensions and concepts. For example, leaders can create formal systems that give intrapreneurs more freedom, or they can support and reward the managers who are effective sponsors of intrapreneurs. Great sponsors are more scarce than intrapreneurs, but training can help increase numbers.

Utilizing and optimizing existing products while embracing innovation is a key element of lasting growth and profitability. A simple yet powerful approach to advancing innovation is to use existing resources within the company, as its employees. In 1968 chemist, Spencer Silver, developed a low tack adhesive while working at Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, now called 3M. By 1977 he had convinced 3M to produce the popular desk accessory, Post-It Note, and by the end of his career at 3M Silver had, all together, filed for 22 patents.

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