Seven Myths Of Intrapreneurship

How to create a disruptive culture that inspires

Over the past three years I’ve researched the connection between innovation and intrapreneurship to determine if intrapreneurs really can drive disruption inside even the most labyrinthine organizations.  The short answer? Yes, but it’s not easy. It requires ingenuity, a little luck, and organizational support to make intrapreneurial endeavours impactful and sustainable.  
 

As part of my research journey, I examined the classic stories of intrapreneurship from the business lexicon over the past 30 years, in organizations from 3M and W.L. Gore to Sun Microsystems.  I was inspired by visionary employees who saw a need and managed to fill it, mainly through their own ingenuity and grit. They faced resistance from colleagues and leaders, and with little expectation for resources beyond 20 percent time for exploration, they somehow beat the odds. They became the heroes of intrapreneurship.
 
Yet, beyond the inspiration these stories provide, I came away wondering whether the mythology that has grown up around these heroes is entirely relevant today. Yes, many have been mavericks, iconoclasts, and dissenters. But in a twenty-first-century organization broadly committed to innovation—as many are today—do intrapreneurs still need to fly under the radar? Is happenstance and serendipity still a core ingredient of entrepreneurial success?
 
Overall, the intrapreneurial mythology we have inherited from the past is more exclusive than inclusive—and that’s making it harder for companies to innovate and grow. It is time to construct a new mythology of intrapreneurship—one that celebrates the diverse skills and behaviors that drive innovation forward today. We can start by taking a hard look at the myths that exist and use them as building blocks for the future:
 
Myth: Intrapreneurship is Too Creative for a Disciplined Approach. 
Truth: Innovation is too important to be conducted in a random way.

At the core of any innovation is an act of creativity…and everyone knows that creative epiphanies are unpredictable. But that doesn’t mean processes can’t guide innovation from idea to impact more reliably. Today, we know a lot more about how to do that. Design thinking, agile, and lean startup methods all show the results that come when people are trained in a disciplined way to do things differently and take calculated risks in search of better results.
 
Myth: Intrapreneurs Go It Alone. 
Truth: Intrapreneurship is a team sport

When people hear the term intrapreneur, many still think of the lone wolf—the voice in the wilderness proclaiming the value of an idea only he or she can recognize. In this scenario, the story of intrapreneurship becomes a hero’s journey centered on a brave soul with the determination to singlehandedly bring about change.
 
In today’s hyper competitive, interconnected environment, that turns out to be a dangerous myth. Today, almost nothing of sufficient scale that moves the needle on performance can be accomplished without teams of contributors, networks of partners, and committed sponsors providing air cover. If we encourage people to go it alone, we keep them from learning to lead change, recruiting likeminded followers, and developing the other skills they need to grow as intrapreneurs.
 
Myth: Only “Creatives” Become Intrapreneurs. 
Truth: Intrapreneurship requires a wide variety of talents and types. A successful intrapreneur can excel at any of them—and can’t be expected to have all of them.

Creativity comes in many forms but people continue to contextualize the term in a narrow sense. We tend to think of individuals who are overtly unorthodox in their thinking, appearance, and otherwise. But intrapreneurial success depends on the contributions of the “suits” as well as “creatives”— hipsters, hackers and hustlers as well as people with more traditional business skills. The right person to lead a team that combines various talents might not be the one with the most imaginative and original mind. It might be the individual whose “creativity” helps them navigate the bureaucratic ins and outs of an organization.
 
Myth: Management’s Best Approach to Intrapreneurs Is Benign Neglect. 
Truth: Management’s best approach to intrapreneurs is active support.

Most of the classic intrapreneurial projects we read about are ones that succeeded without management support. (And the celebrated intrapreneurs who tell their stories usually say they were better off without it.) But here’s the problem with taking your lessons exclusively from outliers: you aren’t hearing from the majority who never made it. Intrapreneurship is better served by managers who both understand the value of it and know how to encourage it without taking charge of it. They help intrapreneurs actively and in many ways—from providing resources and connections to supporting their ongoing development, training and career paths.
 
Myth: Intrapreneurs Aren’t in It For Financial Rewards, and They Don’t Need Performance Metrics. 
Truth: If you want more of something, measure it—and reward it.

Intrapreneurship is a tough enough route that no one takes it without intrinsic motivation. Passion is essential. But this doesn’t need to be an either/or proposition. Extrinsic rewards, whether an intrapreneur demands them or not, signal to the rest of the organization that this is important and valued activity. Performance metrics for innovation not only provide an objective basis for those rewards, they help intrapreneurial teams track progress toward goals and make the case for further investment—and innovative organizations understand this.
 
Myth: Intrapreneurs Are Just Like Entrepreneurs. 
Truth: The typical intrapreneur is different from the typical entrepreneur in terms of skills and motivation.

Intrapreneurs are entrepreneurial in many respects, but that doesn’t make the two synonymous. Both share a builder’s mindset that makes them eager to create valuable solutions that don’t yet exist. But intrapreneurs are less drawn to the huge rewards that can come with founding one’s own firm. They don’t necessarily want the all-consuming hours, unpredictability, and risk that go with a start-up. Often, they see a way to have more impact by staying in their jobs and leveraging their employers’ already established scale and brands. They have the knowledge—and the patience—to navigate the politics and protocols of their large organizations.
 
Myth: Innovation Labs Are the Best Place to House Intrapreneurs. 
Truth: The place for intrapreneurs is everywhere. Innovation centers help provide the discipline and network required to grow intrapreneurial initiatives from idea to execution.

This is a more contemporary myth, because it has grown along with the trend toward large companies, nonprofits, and government institutions creating innovation centers, labs, incubators, and garages. The whole point of these investments in facilities and talent is to focus on fueling the innovation pipeline. So this is where intrapreneurs should be housed, right? While that might seem true at first, the whole point of cultivating intrapreneurship is to encourage it across the organization. Creating a cordoned-off holding tank for intrapreneurs will signal the opposite and imply that innovation can only happen in specially designated spots by the people whose job it is to innovate. Innovation centers provide a clear pathway, training, networks, and other resources to help intrapreneurs succeed—regardless of where they come from.
 
New mythologies don’t emerge just because someone writes a book conducts research and suggests they are needed. The myths we carry around in our heads and choose to live by are harder to dislodge than that. They are formed over the course of years by a combination of our observations of what works and our values regarding how we wish things would work.
       
Right now, we are in a period when corporate innovation activity is exploding. We will have many more models of success, and of failure, to take our lessons from. Many new stories will emerge from which we can gain a new and better understanding—and with these we can construct a new mythology of intrapreneurship. Let’s make it a good one. 
 

Dr. Simone Ahuja is the founder and principal of innovation strategy firm Blood Orange, and co-author of the forthcoming book, Disrupt-It-Yourself: Eight Ways to Hack a Better Business---Before the Competition Does (January, 2019). Connect Simone Ahuja Follow @SimoneAhuja