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As today’s businesses face a combination of technological advancements, environmental instability and new challenges associated with the ongoing pandemic, embracing innovation and supporting entrepreneurial talent will play an important role in how they can adapt to change and realign their focus.
Whether it’s using remote working to build collaborative teams, applying AI to look ahead into the future, or reorganising your corporate structure to foster a culture of innovation, your organisation must find creative ways to overcome hurdles.
Crucially, corporate innovation and internal entrepreneurship will play a fundamental role in helping organisations implement agile solutions and steer the ship towards calmer seas. The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt believes businesses must upskill their workforce with entrepreneurial skills to thrive in a continuously changing world.
With over 582 million entrepreneurs worldwide, entrepreneurship is something most people understand. However, you might not hear the word ‘intrapreneurship’ as often during your daily meetings.
Here at Studio Zao, we’re invested in supporting internal entrepreneurship or ‘intrapreneurship’ to kickstart innovative projects through these testing times. After working with high-profile clients across a broad spectrum of industries, we’ve observed the pressing need for organisations to support internal entrepreneurs and empower their skills to help them along their intrapreneurial journey.
Whether it’s generating new revenue streams or building the infrastructure for innovation to flourish, Studio Zao specialises in running innovation hacks that fuse Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Entrepreneurial Psychology to deliver impactful outcomes alongside culture change.
This article explores how intrapreneurs can devise future scenarios, formulate high-impact strategies, create new propositions, build prototypes and validate ventures to change the face of corporate innovation.
Organisations that foster corporate innovation and internal entrepreneurship will have the foundations to leverage these technologies and champion off-the-wall thinking to overcome new challenges.
As the world faces unprecedented times, the global landscape is changing and businesses must tackle a host of new challenges. Growing uncertainty, disrupted markets, and constant change requires organisations to champion off-the-wall thinking and adapt to a new era of work.
Intrapreneurs are able to take the peculiar human capability of connecting the dots and mobilising energy to the next level, to help future proof the organisations they work for. Intrapreneurs deeply understand customers and stakeholders, see their frustrations, use insights to identify opportunities, creatively devise clever solutions and finally mobilise resources to make their vision a reality.
The broader landscape change has been influenced by a number of factors, including Artificial Intelligence, automation of work and most recently the COVID-19 outbreak. These elements form a perfect storm, where businesses must adapt to remain competitive.
An intrapreneur is an employee within an organisation who drives value-generating opportunities to give their company a competitive edge. Whether it’s launching a new product to enhance customer experiences or finding an innovative solution to cut production costs, intrapreneurs are always looking for imaginative ways to add value to their business.
Read more about the difference between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship here.
Intrapreneurial skills refer to an employee’s ability to think ‘outside the box’, to be a driver of change and to apply creative thinking when faced with a new challenge.
As we’ve seen in the evolving technological context and the current uncertain scenario, individuals with intrapreneurial skills have a huge competitive advantage. For example, in the face of the incumbent rise of AI, while computers can be programmed to process complex tasks, intrapreneurs will still win at lateral thinking, connecting the dots and motivating teams.
As COVID-19 continues to sow the seeds for the next global debt crisis, executive leaders are responsible for finding the best line of attack to maintain healthy balanced sheets and promote positive long-term growth. Organisations must use recent events as a stimulus to build highly-adaptive teams who are prepared for uncertain times in the future.
As the global economy spirals towards the next global recession, executive leaders are responsible for finding the best line of attack to maintain healthy balance sheets and promote positive long-term growth. Organisations must use recent events as a stimulus to build highly-adaptive teams who are prepared for uncertain times in the future.
Embracing experimentation and innovation will give your business the flexibility to react to new opportunities and ride the wave of the latest trends.
We like to break down innovation into four discrete categories:
While the ultimate aim is to combine all of the above into your innovation strategy, implementing incremental innovations can help your business stay ahead of the game in these testing times. Depending on the industry context and your business situation, incremental innovations may also provide fast and actionable steps to nudge your business in the right direction.
After having worked with high-profile clients across a range of industries, we have been able to adapt the key principles of Lean entrepreneurship into a framework named ‘Lean Corporate Innovation’. There are four core pillars of implementing Lean Corporate Innovation:
Many consider intrapreneurship as a form of research and development within a business. Intrapreneurs experiment with new ideas and push creative boundaries.
These experimental projects usually follow one of two directions:
Some intrapreneurs focus on side ventures which allow the company to enter new markets and diversify their product offerings. Creating spin-off ventures can build upon existing brand identities, established audiences, and economies of scope to enter new markets.
Linear growth intrapreneurship involves boosting operational efficiency, refining product design and enriching customer experiences to make incremental improvements.
The future of work will require organisations to develop teams of independent thinkers who can exercise creative ideas and entrepreneurial spirit from within. Intrapreneurs can have a dramatic impact on the DNA of a business by empowering internal innovation and adopting a proactive approach to internal decision-making.
Upskilling your workforce to combine intrapreneurial skills with technical know-how will open doors to an entire universe of exciting growth opportunities. Let’s take a look at the four dimensions of how intrapreneurship can impact innovation in an organisation:
In a time of constant disruption, talented employees with entrepreneurial attitudes and mindsets are increasingly important for organisations. These intrapreneurs operate with the same talents as entrepreneurs, but from within established organisations.
In the book Born to Build, Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Badal use the term ‘builders’ as the inclusive shorthand for both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who specialise in delivering economic energy and impact.
Clifton and Badal cite ten innate psychological characteristics of typical builders:
Looking for individuals who exhibit these ten characteristics can help organisations to step out of their current operational focus and onto the path to developing a team of ‘builders’ for the future.
Nurturing an intrapreneurial culture is a five-step process:
Ideas can develop from both the bottom-up and the top-down. Bringing cross-functional teams together will generate fresh ideas and unlock entrepreneurial talent.
When starting your innovation journey, it is extremely important to involve senior executives and align any innovation programme to tackle key business objectives.
Corporate innovation requires stepping out of your comfort zone, exploring uncharted paths and preparing for pitfalls.
To have an internal formalised framework of values is extremely important to allow internal entrepreneurs to be agile and flexible enough to make innovation happen.
Setting incentives and rewards for entrepreneurial activities helps to deliver a positive message to aspiring intrapreneurs.
In any established organisation, there are internal stakeholders who drive for innovative change, create new products, and lead entirely new spin-off ventures.
Through our experience, we’ve identified five rules of thumb that every corporate intrapreneur and innovation manager should follow:
Instead of updating processes, protocols and digital transformations, you should start by encouraging clients to change the way they think and leading by example with small groups. This way, a shift in mindset is more likely to spread through the whole organisation, especially if supported by positive results and quick wins.
Just as startups need mentors and advisors to gain expertise and build credibility, corporate entrepreneurs need mentors to navigate internal politics, master the expectations of executives, align with key company metrics and, last but not least, gain access to the vast resources available within a large organisation.
When large companies eventually give intrapreneurs the autonomy and resources to delve into new ventures, corporate entrepreneurs are allowed to realise their entrepreneurial ambitions in a safer environment.
Having the ear and trust of senior management means you can explore the full potential of the opportunity at hand, and drive it in the direction that’s best for your company. It’s important to own your narrative and understand the strategic value of your intentions for your organisation.
Depending on the size of your organisation and type of industry you’re working in, reducing dependency on the central systems can be difficult and sometimes not even possible. That said, the principle of striving towards being self-sustaining can be the difference between getting the market traction needed to validate the proposition, or not.
An organisation wanting to innovate should understand the importance of intrapreneurship. A corporate entrepreneurship strategy empowers, enables, nurtures and rewards those who have the ability and willingness to explore, test and validate new ideas.
If you’re looking to embrace intrapreneurship in your organisation and boost corporate innovation, start by asking the following questions:
Despite the many processes, frameworks, tools and models that underpin innovation activities, the individual employees who strive for positive change are the beating heart of forward-thinking corporations. Whether it’s running innovation bootcamps to brainstorm ideas or refining your business proposition to overcome new challenges, unlocking internal talent holds the secret to embracing successful corporate innovation.
50% of executives ranked creativity and entrepreneurial spirit as the top workforce requirement for their organisations to excel in today’s increasingly disruptive and complex world (Source: Accenture)
Discover our learnings and insights on how to identify, empower and unleash the potential of intrapreneurs as key drivers of change from within.
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COVID-19 Innovation Strategies For The New Normal Studio Zao 
