Understanding the purpose behind Intrapreneurship

Edit: 06/10/23

What are the various drivers for organizations to invest in Intrapreneurship? The answers that we received to this question are as follows:

1. Make Innovation everyone’s agenda and foster a passion for Intrapreneurship in the organization. This was the most important reason we heard for creating a program that encourages innovation and intrapreneurship.
2. Make the organization more agile. In today’s fast-changing world, large organizations find their bureaucracy and complex processes slowing them down vis-à-vis younger, smaller and more nimble players. Thus, agility has become the key to staying competitive.
3. Make the pace of innovation faster. Easier and cheaper access to technology has brought down the barriers to innovation. Small startups with limited resources are now able to come up with products and solutions that can challenge the well-established larger players. Therefore, Intrapreneurship is seen as the means to quicken the pace of innovation by crowdsourcing it through employees. The time for long-drawn research and development is now gone.
4. Find future leaders for the organization. The process of encouraging and selecting Intrapreneurs on the basis of their new product and solution ideas, and working with them while they bring those ideas to the market, is a great way to find and develop future leaders.
5. Search for the 'next big thing'. All organizations, in their own way, are searching for ’the next big thing’ that would lead them to the products and solutions which will bring in large business growth and better profitability. We have observed, during the course of this research that most organizations have now prioritized their efforts through focusing on Deep Technology like AI/ML, IOT, Big Data/Analytics, Cloud, Nanotech, Blockchain, Cybersecurity and Quantum Computing.
6. Reduce cost of innovation through crowdsourcing ideas. Most of the participants of our research have initiated, at the minimum, programs like Hackathons, Innovation Days or Demo Days to encourage employees to submit or present their ideas. These opportunities are not restricted to those who are a part of the designated R&D function but to employees of all functions. This recognition that good ideas can come from anyone and that crowdsourcing of ideas makes for larger selection of ideas, allows for a better chance of finding one that will work at very little cost.
7. Make a difference to society through Social Impact projects inspires Intrapreneurship within the company. A few organizations have taken it upon themselves to work on some of the pressing social problems and find solutions for them. We have observed that organizations that do this, not for revenue reasons, gain in many other areas. It helps build a good name for the organization, which helps attract better employees. The employees take pride in working for organizations that have gained respect for their contribution to society, thus improving employee retention.
8. Drive strategic priorities. Large organizations are now engaging employees in driving strategic priorities through intrapreneurship programs; these programs are linked to business problems, and geared to impact the top-line or bottom-line to achieve:

• Strategic or operational excellence
• Product or services improvement
• New product development