Of course its the impact the programme has - social, financial, strategic, operational, environmental etc... which in turn impacts its longevity and independence from the founders (and I'm thinking of Nick Hughes and M-Pesa who we interrogated (nicely) all Monday afternoon at the Lab.
But also the degree to which the idea stretches the individual and teams who conceived and deliver it - the degree to which the idea helps the individuals who are connected to it fulfil their (leadership) potential - and here I'm thinking not just of all our Lab faculty, but also our participants.
Its also vital that social intrapreneurs actively develop trusting relationships with people outside of the organisation who share their same passion, but can look at the issue from a different non business perspective and they can do the same for people from other sectors. Its all about collaborating for value!
My question is about connecting social intrapraneurs with external parties mandated to work in their area of interest. For example, I work at the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the UN and WTO. We are mandated to help SMEs in developing countries achieve export success. We are right at the heart of trade and development. I see from some of the posts that many intrepreneurs are looking at ways in which the company where they work, can do business AND do good. In that context, wouldn't it make sense for 'your' intrapreneurs' and a few of our own intrepreneurs here at ITC, to look at how we can work together? I've just been mandated to set up a task force in an exciting area that intersects with this area perfectly. While I am looking for our own intrapraneurs - fresh thinkers who want to be part of change - I am wondering how to connect with corporate intrapreneurs. Advice?
In my experience the type of innovation required to deliver really impactful change often happens at the intersection of different sectors, industries and organisations - in often quite unconventional partnerships.
We want to do much more of this and encourage a true co-creation approach. Intrapreneurs will know how to navigate and leverage the resources of the large corporation, but social entrepreneurs, NGOs and other intermediaries will often be far closer to the societal issues and be embedded much deeper within the community. The combination of the two can therefore be powerful.
Is there a way you can leverage your relationships to bring those really deep consumer insights to the table and ensure the intrapreneurs are basing decisions and designing solutions based on the very best insights?
In our video, Lisa MacCallum at Nike talks explicitly about how she got permission for a 'longer runway'. She clarified up front with senior management the expectations of performance - was she going to have to deliver to business metrics in the short term or did she have a longer runway to experiment. This won't always be the case for intrapreneurs operating slightly more under the radar / on top of their day jobs. But, when you have senior level support, be clear to set expectations around success up front. And if you have non-negotiables, be clear about those too...
Haha, yes, it appears so;) Super interesting initiative @ Barclays. Would I be wrong to say that this structure is a way to kind of leap frog the challenges that would be/are associated with integrating the mindset of social innovation into the standing business? And do you have any ambitions to try to integrate some of the projects that come out of the Social Innovation Facility into the business later on (in essence an incubator function)? I see the incubator solution in a number of corporations and while I think it can be quite effective to get projects off the ground and some of the most common barriers in the line of business out of the way, it's not always easy to apply scale to these projects (which would typically require it to be integrated into the core business subsequently). What's your experience/takein this area?
Maggie, I think we've got to try and make it a less lonely journey for some people so creating the types of channels like the lab and perhaps peer groups could help to keep the enthusiasm up if change doesn't seem to be happening or if its really slow.
Adrian, I think yours is a really important point: each industry tends to be very internally focused. I'm a development practitioner, working on enhancing the social impact of business, particularly in fragile and frontier markets. The value-added that the kind of organizations I work with - the World Bank and US institute for Peace for example - comes from their ability to share knowledge and ideas with the business community.
Such a great idea - we are hearing more and more about the need to develop cross-sectoral collaborations with intrapreneurs!
It's early days for our League of Intrapreneurs network, but our hope is that by nurturing this community they will be easier to find and identify. Feel free to reach out to me directly and I will happily point you to relevant intrapreneurs in our network.
Dr Nick Hill from the Zoological Society of London (and a thoroughly nice guy) and Miriam Turner of Interface (who's also nice) are a great example of this - collaborating on the Net-works project: https://vimeo.com/teletech/review/67838179/6f851cb2a3
Thanks for that one Milan! Yes, the point I was trying to make is that sure, one might need a longer runway as Maggie puts it before an idea pays back, breaks even or makes a profit. But in some circumstances the traditional metrics of business success are wholly innappropriate to a new intrapreneurial initiative that is seeking to disrupt. My rows of zeros on the scorecard!
The challenge then becomes how you to survive in an environment where annual appraisals and incentive mechaisms all revolve around legacy performance systems
Social value and business value need not be mutually exclusive. Take a look at a lot of Michael Porter and Mark Kramer's work around Shared Value (Porter had a TED talk on the subject just recently).
Great reply and very much agree on the point of enabling structures. One question though: Do you think that the challenges/barriers are in any way different for social innovation (and hence social intrapreneurs) versus "conventional" innvoations (and hence conventional intrapreneurs:-)? I guess another way of putting it; couldn't a company in theory have a great enabling environment for innovation (e.g. product, process, technology) but not necessarily for social innovation? And if so, what are the additional factors that the social intrapreneur need to keep in mind?
Thank you for tuning into this lively discussion! A special thank you to our panel!
We will leave this discussion open, so please feel free to continue to post your comments!
If you are interested in intrapreneurship, check out our new Intrapreneur Zone: http://intrapreneur.businessfightspoverty.org - we'll be posting some great content up there over the next few weeks, including a new series with The League of Intrapreneurs.
Would love to help think through and explore this challenge. You're hitting on a really important area of how intrapreneurs can connect across sectors where the issues and the interests are increasingly converging. I think that's what could drive real innovation - coming together to find ways of solving social problems and delivering public goods through private entrepreneurship and investment. If you're also based in Geneva we could catch up face to face?
But, don´t they have to be already in a strong position inside the company so that their ideas are taking seriously? I agree that it´s not related to a certain position, but you need some relevance to be heard at the top. How did you and the rest of the panel got to a level of influence in the companies you work at? Can you share a bit about your background?
You first have to be realistic and try and find a way to align your metrics to the traditional ones while pushing to change them. But you can't just ignore them. I also think that sometimes all it takes it just to acknowledge the normal business metrics to show that you understand the organisational context and then present an argument as to why your metrics will be better in the long run. Sometimes it will mean proposing some changes over a period of time.
Measuring your own success is tough because by nature most intrapreneurship projects are exploratory so you'd need milestones for different phases depending on the evolution of the idea. Right at the start I would simply treat if like a research hypothesis. Can I convince the organisation to test the idea or not? Can I get enough resources allocated to the idea? Then once the idea has been developed into a plan, the plan will have key milestones. Finally once past pilot stages, there will be some measures around whether its gets adopted as business as usual by the organisation.