An entrepreneur starts a business as a means of providing a needed service. Intrapreneurs are an alternative form of that.

To be exact, they are in their first stage to becoming entrepreneurs.

Intrapreneurship: every company’s secret weapon

By recognizing and solving important problems within their firm, they also obtain the skills that are required to start their own company.

Nevertheless, they don’t comprise simple employees, but investors. They invest their time and abilities to help their company grow, sometimes at expense of their personal financial outcome.

Intrapreneurs themselves present solutions in flesh.

Solutions to problems that are found in corporate environments and are characterized by innovative, dynamic and risky methods, and decision-making.

These individuals are responsible for bringing new, profitable products and services into life with a mindset towards the benefit of everyone, both their customers and the company they work for.

Despite being rather hard to uncover in organizations that are defined by strict schedules, hierarchy, and bureaucratic procedures, it is possible to spot these rare gems within any company.

More specifically, intrapreneurs are:

1. Self-motivated

Financial rewards and climbing the corporate ladder leave them indifferent. The factor that drives them is their ability to influence and make a change.

2. Adaptable and strategic

They understand trends. They are the first to know where the company needs to go and in which ways to grow. That allows their firms to be ahead of their competitors.

3. Resilient

They don’t give up at the first sign of disappointment and they embrace failure, which later leads them to implement those pragmatic results into the creation of a better and more polished venture. Current directions can be shifted drastically.

4. Authentic and upright

They manage to be both confident in their skills, as well as modest about them. They feel a great social responsibility and wish to give back to society in overall.

5. Team players

They appreciate synergy, they know how to find the right people to help them and they share the credit accordingly.

6. Creative

From brainstorming to design thinking and mind mapping, not only are their final projects groundbreaking, their way there includes just as much effort and construction with visualizing. They think outside of the box.

Millenials, in particular, comprise the biggest quota of these talented employees, as they are the ones who are eager to initiate change with their careers and create an impact.

It’s obvious what an indispensable role corporate entrepreneurs play in the survival of their firm in this day and age.

In order for companies to adjust to those changes, they support intrapreneurs with the resources, expertise and security needed for their ideas’ realization and the latter create novelty, following the goal of the organization.

Taking advantage of the dynamic nature of an intrapreneur increases the potential of an otherwise static organization. However, the individuals accountable for the progress can maintain their safe position under it.

This is not the case with entrepreneurs venturing on their own, who are fully responsible for the possible failure.

To help foster intrapreneurship, a concrete management commitment is vital. It all comes down to the senior managers of the firm to provide the conditions that help the “fail fast” kind of attitude flourish.

Such free-spirited minds that have no boundaries are most likely difficult to keep as employees, especially if companies are super protective of their resources and they penalize failure.

In that sense, certain measures have to be taken. If companies give their talent projects to own or something to concentrate on, people will stay and help the first move forward.

Encouraging flexibility and idea-sharing, collaborating and passing down knowledge from a more experienced intrapreneur to the others, empowering employees to be the owners of their tasks, to make informed choices and accept personal responsibility for their actions and its consequences will definitely increase the odds of keeping those game-changers.

Over time, intrapreneurs take on roles of a company’s executive leaders, as they understand the business from all levels. A company should recognize, promote and reward its intrapreneurs, so that it can continue growing further.

Only such organizations will survive the challenge of time and thrive to become the leaders of the future.

How do you nurture intrapreneurship within your organization? Are you an intrapreneur? Let me know in the comments below.

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