Kill an Intrapreneur

That is what lot of us do. Immediately after the idea comes, comes post-success thoughts like,

• Will the manager, who threw nails at my vehicle when i needed a push, who cannot even spell Intrapreneur ... will he/she get the rewards?
• Why should my country director be promoted for the hard work i do, when i haven't even talked to him for 10min?
• Why should stand in queue asking for funds to senior management? Don't they belong to same company?
• How much of say i have in the venture? Is it only that i am allowed to work hard, but decison making is delegated as per wishes?
• Why should i be ok with a small portion of money the venture makes and heavy title? Why should rest of the mediocre peopled company get the benefits?
  

And then the fear-invoking thoughts of failure like,

• If everything ends up as a failure, would i be worse compared to those who took safe approach?
  
• Would i have burnt myself down?
• Can i quit in between?
• Will i go through post-mortem sessions?
• Whatever one says, failure is not easy to cope with. May be you will not like to stay in the company after a failure?
  

There are equal number of reasons for going for Intrapreneurship. And these debates have to play in the minds of each intrapreneur and not on blogs/real world.

Let us invoke the part of intellect that helps us progress in the event of lot of uncertaininty , ambiguity etc. Let us prevent another murder with this thought,

Compare alternatives with the next best alternative. May the better alternative to Intrapreneurship is Enterpreneurship and if you are not ready to be an enterpreneur than there is no better alternative for you than intrapreneurship.

Why intrapreneur and not enterpreneur?

The reasons are many and are specific to intrapreneur. It could be personal like work-life balance. It could be business, like the new idea could be successful in the business context of the company and may not have great chances outside. It could be that an opportunity shows up in organizational context. May be it doesn't matter to the person. May be you want to have fun at work and current job doesn't level up. May be you just want to try on something new.

Another dimension where this discussion often leads to is risk vs. rewards. Being an intrapreneur means you have a safety net. If everything fails, you still get your salary. If it is a great sucess, you do not get what an enterpreneur would , but you do get a lot - and may be that is enough for e.g. you being a VP in a big company and some of the people you hired at similar executive positions.

Whatever be the reason, if you find yourself ready to be intrapreneur, then you should start thinking about next steps: Where you are and what do you need to succeed?

Who is an intrapreneur?

In-house entrepreneurs, -- those "dreamers who -- can increase the speed and cost-effectiveness of technology transfer from R&D to the marketplace.

Read a very defining article by Pinchot (who coined this term)

What is this about?

India is country of creative people and next step for us is to convert these ideas into successful ventures. While enterpreneurship might be great for some people, some of us creative people wish to do this in an organization context. This is what is termed as Intrapreurship. Some of us are successful in taking ideas to success in the context of company. But the overall conversion ratio of ideas to successful products/ventures is very less. Some of the organizations have started thinking about this and this blog is about sharing and discussing learnings from a practitoner's point of view.