Intrapreneurship

Definition: An Intrapreneurship is the system wherein the principles of

entrepreneurship are practiced within the boundaries of the firm. An
intrapreneur is a person who takes on the responsibility to innovate new ideas,
products and processes or any new invention within the organization.
An intrapreneur is the individual who thinks out of the box and possesses the
leadership skills and does not fear from risk. Thus, an intrapreneur possesses the
same traits as that of an entrepreneur.

The concept of an Intrapreneurship can be well understood in contrast to the

entrepreneurship. Following are the points of distinction between these two
terms:

1. Intrapreneurship is restorative in nature, i.e. an organization encourages

the employees to practice the entrepreneurial principles to counter
stagnation within the firm or transform the slow growth of the company
into a high-growth. Whereas the entrepreneurship is developmental in
 nature, i.e. an individual creates something that has never existed before,
such as a new product, process or a new venture itself.
2. In intrapreneurship, the major challenge that individual faces are from
the company’s culture itself. Sometimes, the corporate relationships and
the mindsets of employees acts as a hurdle in the path of an intrapreneur.
Whereas, in the case of entrepreneurship, the market is the only enemy.
An entrepreneur has to scrutinize the market conditions thoroughly to
cross the hurdles coming in his way.
3. An intrapreneur has an access to firm’s resources such as funds,
manufacturing setups, marketing facilities, and other supporting activities
to give shape to his dreams. Whereas an entrepreneur has to arrange
his own resources such as own funds or the borrowed funds,
manufacturing facilities, marketing facilities, etc.
4. An intrapreneur does not have the ownership of a new venture and is not
even independent to take decisions, whereas an entrepreneur is the
whole sole owner of the new venture established by him. Also, he is
independent to take any decisions with respect to his setup.
Thus, an Intrapreneurship is a practice of creating the entrepreneurial
environment within the organization, thereby enabling the employees to apply
their entrepreneurial skills in the job roles; they are assigned to.
Characteristics of Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurs are often falsely conceptualized as entrepreneurs. Yes, they are

entrepreneurs, but in the skin of employees.

Let us now read below the features of intrapreneurship to go through this

concept in detail:

● Diversification: Intrapreneurship promotes teams with people of

different gender, age groups, culture and fields.
● Innovative Approach: It is a creative initiative for the progress of
both the employee and the company.
● Restoration Concept: An intrapreneur adds value to an existing
company by improving the products, services, methods or
perceptions.
● Mutual Benefit: Through intrapreneurship, an employee achieves
empowerment and self-actualisation; and the company also grows
remarkably.
● Calculated Risk: The risk involved in an intrapreneur’s project is
well analyzed and planned before it is onboard.
 ● No Investment by Intrapreneur: The intrapreneur is the brain
behind the idea but need not put even a penny into the project. The
company funds it at every stage of business.
● Profit-Sharing Agreement: In many organizations, a profit-sharing
agreement is signed mutually between the company and the
employee.

Importance of Intrapreneurship
The present-day market is highly volatile. Constant improvement and creative
inputs have become quite essential for companies to stay in the competition.

Intrapreneurs have the solution to many such problems. Let us now see how can
intrapreneurship help:

● Penetrate New Markets: An intrapreneur’s idea sometimes lead to

availing of the business opportunities prevailing in the new or
existing market.
● Employee Empowerment: The company can strengthen its bond
with the workforce by granting them authority along with
responsibility.
 ● Optimum Human Resource Utilization: Intrapreneurship provides
an opportunity to the employees for outperforming their key
responsibility area.
● Economic Stability: It is also undertaken to address market
instability and economic downturns through rapid innovation.
● Innovative Growth: Idea generation is the basis of development.
Thus, to nurture an entity well, intrapreneurs play a significant role
in the business.

Intrapreneurship Process
To understand the basic functioning of the intrapreneurship in any organization,
we have summarized the whole process into the following steps:

Step 1: The first step is to encourage the workers to put forward their views and
opinions. Also, the employees should be made familiar with the person or
authority in front of whom he/she can present the idea.

Step 2: The next is analyzing the compatibility of the idea with the
organizational need, mission, objectives, values, vision, consumer demand, etc.

Step 3: Now is the time to inspect the idea from different perspectives to seek
any scope of betterment.

Step 4: This step is quite crucial as it aims at getting the approval on idea
implementation from all the related parties like team, associates, investors and
even customers (in case of industrial buyers).

Step 5: The final feasibility test of any new project can be done by identifying
the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) for both, the idea
and the person himself or herself.
Step 6: After the idea is well tested for compatibility, applicability and
feasibility, it is modified and crafted such that it becomes workable for the
organization.

Barriers to Intrapreneurship
When an organization head towards adopting intrapreneurship as a part of
its corporate culture, the following barriers may arise on the way of making
such improvements:

● Multiple CEOs: If a company has more than one CEO with

different mindsets, then the employee may not get equal support
from each one of them, for intrapreneurship practice.
● Cultural Issues: Many of the other employees who do not take
intrapreneurship seriously or keep themselves away from such
practice may raise problems.
● Talent Acquisition Problems: Identifying an intrapreneur within
an employee is a challenging task for the human resource
department.
● Adverse Market Response: The consumers sometimes feel that the
innovated product fail to meet their requirements.
● Lack or Shift of Suitable Resource: An intrapreneur leaving the
organization or the company unable to appoint one, may lead to its
failure.
Example of Intrapreneurship

Happy meal, as we all know, is a kids centric meal box from McDonald’s is an
intrapreneurship idea.

Dick Brams, one of the regional managers of the brand at St. Louis, developed
an idea of serving the kids with a complete meal. He came with an innovation of
making a box of food and beverage items in small quantities, in the year 1977.

The Entrepreneurship Process

The Entrepreneurship Process can be expressed as a set of procedures and
methodologies, followed by entrepreneurs to establish a new business or
venture. All the entrepreneurship process phases have certain meanings and
functionality, which one has to trail and pursue for setting up a venture.
Here is a flow diagram of the different phases of the Entrepreneurship process.

Let us discuss each of the phases in brief:

1.Identification of Opportunity
At the very early stage, an entrepreneur has to detect a problem in society and
sense out some opportunities and visualize the market or consumer ratio.
His/her creativity and innovation will also bring challenges. Entrepreneurs
should look for the scope to find an alternate efficient solution for needs, wants,
detecting issues and problems, and effective solutions. If you're opting for the
solution and you as an entrepreneur is standing in the very front, then you are on
the advantageous side, which provides product identification and top reliability
in the market.

2. Having a clear vision

There is a saying - "A vision without implementation is just a dream with closed
eyes." Another phase that the entrepreneur must have to see while creating his
empire is to look beyond the idea or plan. He/she has to have a vision from the
experience and a creative mindset to come up with new and innovative
methodologies for solving different problems. Let suppose; Mark Zuckerberg
came up with the plan to connect the whole world socially + digitally. But his
ideas didn't stop by just creating the popular social networking site - Facebook.

3.Coax Others Towards Your Vision

After having a clear vision and planning tactic in mind, an entrepreneur has to
form a team with different skill-sets who will work together to make the vision
a reality. As an entrepreneur, he/she has to persuade all those individuals
(partners, family members, financiers, employees) towards the same goals and
motives.

4.Resource Gathering
In this phase, an entrepreneur has to come up with a strong business plan and a
powerful pitching capability to make your audience understand the potential in
your idea. Your business plan should also attract venture capitalists, investors,
different financial institutions, partners, and promoters. There is a separate topic
discussing each of their roles in detail. After getting financial support, the
entrepreneur has to identify resources (which can be materials, office location,
or workforce) to turn their ideas into a viable enterprise.

5.Creating the Venture

After all the resources are in the proper place and arranged, it is time to develop
the venture and start running it successfully. This requires most of the skills that
an entrepreneur should possess .

6.Bring Adaptability with Time

It is essential to monitor and realize when the up-gradation is necessary for an
organization. Because if you do not keep bringing enhanced things on the table,
someone else will take away the market and hence the profit. The entrepreneurs
only have to think out of the box and adapt to the changing market conditions.
From the example of point (ii), Mark Zuckerberg's vision of connecting every
individual socially through digital medium didn't end up by just creating
Facebook.
He and his co-founders' team kept innovating the ideas and diving deep into
other associated domains like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning
(ML). Hence, such algorithms run in the background to make connectivity and
people's recommendations more productive and smart.