Insights
The Bedford Consulting Group: Embrace and Lead a Culture Aligned with Intrapreneurship
The Time Is Now for Executives to Embrace Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurship is not new – the concept was invented in 1978 by American entrepreneur and author Gifford Pinchot III, and popularized in the mid-80s when Steve Jobs famously told Newsweek:
“The Macintosh team was what is commonly known as intrapreneurship… a group of people going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company.”
An intrapreneur is an employee who has the mentality of an entrepreneur. Mainly, they do for corporate innovation what an entrepreneur does for a startup. Companies such as Google and 3M are well known for successes that stem from intrapreneurship. At 3M, intrapreneurs developed Post-It Notes, and at Google, intrapreneurs created Gmail, AdSense and Google News. However, these companies are a minority, and more large organizations need to take advantage of the power of intrapreneurship.
The Bedford Consulting Group suggests before deciding on how your organization can embrace intrapreneurship, have your leadership team consider these questions:
- Could our company benefit from an injection of intrapreneurial energy? How?
- How can we leverage existing (or develop new) resources to nurture intrapraneurs and intrapreneurial teams?
- How can we prepare and develop our business model to accept the creative disruption of the intrapreneurial project?