INTRAPRENEURSHIP

What is Intrapreneurship?: Intrapreneurship is the practice of entrepreneurship by employees within an organization.

Difference between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur:
An entrepreneur takes substantial risk in being the owner and operator of a business with expectations of financial profit and other rewards that the business may generate. On the contrary, an intrapreneur is an individual employed by an organization for remuneration, which is based on the financial success of the unit he is responsible for. Intrapreneurs share the same traits as entrepreneurs such as conviction, zeal and insight. As the intrapreneur continues to expresses his ideas vigorously, it will reveal the gap between the philosophy of the organization and the employee. If the organization supports him in pursuing his ideas, he succeeds. If not, he is likely to leave the organization and set up his own business.

Example of intrapreneurship: A classic case of intrapreneurs is that of the founders of Adobe, John Warnock and Charles Geschke. They both were employees of Xerox. As employees of Xerox, they were frustrated because their new product ideas were not encouraged. They quit Xerox in the early 1980s to begin their own business. Currently, Adobe has an annual turnover of over $3 billion.

Examples of Intrapreneurs:
A lot of companies are known for their efforts towards nurturing their in-house talents to promote innovation. The prominent among them is “Skunk Works” group at Lockheed Martin. This group formed in 1943 to build P-80 fighter jets. Kelly Johnson was the director of the project, a person who gave “14 rules of intrapreneurship”.

At “3M” employees could spend their 15% time working on the projects they like for the betterment of the company. On the initial success of the project, 3M even funds it for further development.

Genesis Grant is another 3M intrapreneurial program which finances projects that might not end up getting funds through normal channels. Genesis Grant offers $85,000 to these innovators to carry forward their projects
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Robbie Bach, J Allard and team’s XBOX might not have been feasible without the Microsoft’s money and infrastructure. The project required 100s of millions and quality talent to make the product.