With the rise and prominence of start-ups and unicorns over the last decade, much has been written about entrepreneurship. Simply put, it is the creation of a brand new service or offering that’s not affiliated to an existing company. The company behind the start-up is starting from ground zero, from scratch, and taking on all the risks that come with creating new business.
Many who have followed these developments while sitting on the sidelines have the desire to taste some of that success. They believe their ideas have the potential to change the world – or at the least, some part of it.
Intrapreneurship, on the other hand, is innovation within an organisation. Intrapreneurs are employees, and have the ability to work on new ideas while continuing to enjoy their salaries, and work on ideas during company time, and with company resources (albeit not infinite).
Know more about the differences between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.
With so many benefits to be had – why do people leave the comfort of their jobs and salaries to venture into the unknown? Two come to mind:
1) Company culture – mature, bureaucratic companies that don’t value ideas generated by their employees. They are steeped in their old ways and can’t seem to think out of the box, because “that’s not how things are done here”. New ideas (whether products or services) are the responsibility of consultants, or the R&D department.
2) Managers – it is not uncommon to find managers who stand in the way of their subordinates’ ideas, due to jealousy, feeling threatened, or assuming that they are not prioritising their jobs. In their minds, their subordinates have no business developing new ideas for the company, are there to make the team – and their manager – look good.
Paul McAleese (former GSK) said that risk tolerance is lowest at middle management. Senior management may advocate innovation; middle managers tend to kill it.
How can middle managers (or management, generally speaking) enable innovation in an organisation?
1) Give time for thinking – Google is famed for its 20% initiative that allows employees to take 20% of their paid work time to work on ideas and projects. Google Adsense, Gmail and Google News were borne and developed via this initiative. Other companies, including Atlassian and 3M also had their own innovation moments for employees. While most organisations don’t have the liberty to implement ‘20% project’ slots for employees, some time should be considered for employees to think, explore and innovate for their company’s benefit.
2) Support, don’t stand in the way – while your subordinates are there to do what’s most important for the team, give them room to experiment and spread their wings. An employee who feels caged is one who may quickly start looking around for other roles or companies that value innovation more.
3) Don’t be glued to old practices – have you ever experienced a situation where you proposed a new and improved, much faster way to serve a customer with information, but the team leader said, “We need to create powerpoints!”? Out with old and in with the new, we say. Embrace new ways of working, pilot them and monitor if they succeed or fail.
4) Enable innovation – skunkworks and hackathons are common terms used by digital and transformation teams, but they should not be restricted to select teams. Innovation opportunities should be open to all departments, which could result in new developments.
5) Innovation platforms – enabling innovation must go beyond giving employees time and space. Innovation platforms are part-and-parcel of the culture. They enable collaboration and co-working, allowing others to improve on ideas. While Slack has become a household name for collaboration, there are other online, web-based programs that do just as much, if not more.
While managers may be quick to dismiss innovation amongst their teams (“You think you’re going build the next Gmail here?”), they should take a step back and see the benefits that innovation can bring. When company cultures and managers make way for innovation from within, they enable the creation and development of products and services that have the potential to become household names. It’s not just about the next Gmail or Google News; it can bring about developments in the way the team works, and the results the team achieves.
[…] 7. Unsupportive of passion – often an unconscious bias. Many managers are guilty of not encouraging their colleagues when they want to explore new things, try out an unrelated project, or head in a different direction. This could be exploring job rotations, transferring to other teams, or working on an idea that’s completely unrelated to the team’s day-to-day role. […]