Premise: Intrapreneurship is when there are employees who act like entrepreneurs within their current companies. Some companies avoid these traits, but they can be transformational, if allowed. But, intrapreneurs should also benefit fairly.
There are many traits companies and business leaders value in their employees and prospective hires.
And then there’s intrapreneurship.
An intrapreneur can be simply defined as an employee of an organization with an entrepreneurial spirit. While entrepreneurs use their various traits — creativity, self motivation, etc. — to start their own ventures, intrapreneurs use these same talents and abilities to push their company forward.
Traditionally, many companies have avoided hiring or inspiring entrepreneurial workers. Sometimes it’s for fear of these staff members taking company knowledge off with them to start their own enterprises. Other times, it’s simply the suspicion that these intrapreneurs may be difficult to manage or averse to rules and red tape.
However, what modern workplaces have learned is that intrapreneurs very often make great employees, sometimes the very best. With the right encouragement, a healthy level of autonomy, and solid leadership, organizations will almost certainly find this to be true, as well.
In this post, we’re going to discuss the advantages and benefits managers and their companies reap when they allow the entrepreneurial characteristics in their employees to shine.
So, without further ado —
Here are 5 ways organizations benefit from entrepreneurial employees:
1. They Are Full of Ideas
First and foremost, entrepreneurial employees are very often veritable wellsprings of ideas. Many are minor, a few might have larger potential benefits or consequences, and one or two here and there could just be the game changer an organization needs to grow, evolve, and beat the competition.
Not only are they full of ideas, but their ideas are usually creative and novel, given their ability to think outside the box. Intrapreneurs may proffer their ideas at any time, from during lunch breaks to scheduled brainstorming sessions.
2. They Are Innovative
Elizabeth Pinchot and her husband Gifford Pinchot III are credited with coining the term intrapreneurship and the concept behind it.
Mr. Pinchot explained intrapreneurship as intra-corporate entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurs as “dreamers who do.” He went on to describe them as “those who take responsibility for creating an innovation of any kind within an organization.”
Leading companies today harness the innate intrapreneurship of their workers for their benefit. Companies like Facebook and 3M are known for being great places for entrepreneurial employees to thrive. Google, for example, has a much-lauded “20% time” rule, which allows employees to spend up to one-fifth of their time working on passion projects and innovative experiments that could become The Next Big Thing. In fact, some of their most successful services, including AdSense and Google News, started this way.
3. They’re Less Afraid of Making Mistakes
Intrapreneurs are often less afraid of making mistakes than their less-entrepreneurial colleagues. Now, this isn’t to say that they’re careless employees, which is certainly not the case. Rather, because of the wealth of ideas they have to offer, they’ll be used to getting some of them shot down and some of them not panning out as hoped for.
In other words, they’re resilient. They know that some — perhaps a great majority — of their ideas will fail or not make it past the pitch. But, due to their innumerable innovative thoughts and their undying hope, they won’t be afraid to propose a new idea just because their last one didn’t work out.
4. They Know How to Bring People Together
Perhaps due to their inherent optimism and passion for their projects, intrapreneurs are often great on teams for their infectious positivity. When they’re allowed to thrive and be in their true element, entrepreneurial employees such as these can easily become the backbone of any team or department, at least in a morale or teamwork sense. Given time, intrapreneurs can become accomplished, well-loved leaders, thanks to these very reasons.
Also, maybe because it requires some level of personability to turn their ideas into realized projects, entrepreneurial workers are great at collaboration and communication, generally speaking. This is helpful for intra-team settings, of course, but it also becomes obvious when cross-team cooperation or extra-organizational efforts are required. The enthusiasm intrapreneurs tend to have, coupled with their unique perspectives, almost always benefit their personal and professional relationships.
5. It’s a Win-Win Situation
Finally, one of the best reasons to encourage entrepreneurship within an organization is that it can benefit both parties, the company and the employee.
The company can obviously benefit from any ideas that do pan out. Whether incremental improvements or whole new service offerings, organizations may achieve some of their greatest successes through what may at first have been a throwaway idea.
On the other side, when entrepreneurial employees can feel their suggestions are genuinely contemplated and ideas are considered, they’ll thrive. There will be a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment, that they wouldn’t get if their ideas were not shared, or were dismissed.
And, organizations win once more as they retain top talent, employees who - with their out-of-the-box ideas and innovative mindsets - may just take the company to the next level.
Written by Christian Eilers
