Why call them intrapreneurs? Because they care about making a difference BEYOND the bottom line (usually a double or triple bottom line, including social/environmental value as well as financial value).
Social entrepreneurs, as said earlier, start something completely new. But social intrapreneurs may also be creating something new for the company. As an intrapreneur at a 700+ global data analytics solutions firm, my work built on the employee volunteering events people previously ran in an ad hoc way. I used my strength as a "connector" to get things going on a more global and more frequent basis. In particular, no one had reached out to the New Delhi office before me (regarding employee volunteering), so when I started connecting to other like-minded changemakers there, we unleashed a lot of positive energy that went towards strengthening the company and local community.
Bottom line: intrapreneurs are both creators and connectors towards triple bottom line results
In general, the more dialogue the better...but with limited time, intrapreneurs may be more interested in learning from the experiences of other intrapreneurs (and likewise with social entrepreneurs)... with the caveat that a lot depends on your particular industry. An intrapreneur in a consumer facing retail company may not have as much in common with an intrapreneur at a B2B firm, as someone in a fellow retail company. The optimal "creating" and "connecting" strategies are slightly different, and they vary both by industry and by company.
Social entrepreneurs would also benefit not just from "more dialogue" but from more solid "matchmaking" opportunities with intrapreneurs in industries or companies where the social entrepreneur could partner to expand. That's something that is currently missing in the marketplace - "business proposal dating" for #socint / #socent
I guess my issue with the term (and I have a similar issue with "social entrepreneurship") is that it creates a sense of "otherness". I'm worried if we create a label for social intrapreneur (or just "intrapreneur") it assumes that doing this kind of work (connecting, thinking beyond the bottom line) will be seen in corporate culture as something beyond the scope of business as usual. Really, we want to integrate this into core business practices, so my hope is that these terms will one day not be necessary and what you accomplish will be commonplace.
Katharine - as you demonstrated in your case - one of the key things that successful intrapreneurs do is leverage the reach, systems, people and other assets of the organisations to deliver impact at scale. As a community, I think we could probably do better connecting these people with social entrepreneurs - both as a source of learning, but potentially even as a delivery partner.
True. But until intrapreneurship is "business as usual," intrapreneurs still need to "push the envelope" a bit. Changing corporate cultures can be slow and difficult!
Intrapreneurs can learn that social entrepreneurship is not just about starting a business – it is about starting and managing a growing concern that can stimulates jobs and economic growth within the organization also does ‘good’ from a social and cultural perspective- also WITHIN the organization. As others here have posted, its about changing the culture of business organizations. It is about starting "socal intrepreneurship" in business organizations that help the bottom line and in ways that help others – even if only one or two people – to get jobs, learn skills, contribute to the "local" social fabric, and to create success stories from within far beyond the ‘headlines’ of daily business journals.
Jeff, you’ve pretty much summed up why I do what I do! We at Mix-fits think that what we are calling social intrapreneurs can be in any organisation and at any level. Especially now as we become more connected that people in orgs regardless of function or experience can have a perspective on how their organisation works and what it can do and this perspective can now be shared through various media. And somewhere in that mix of employees could be the idea to positively link their org with a broader social benefit.
Social entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs that have already broken through, can provide support to people in orgs wanting their view to be heard and to take action. Often, as we have probably experienced sometime in our career, corporate culture can be quite dominant in reinforcing what we can/can’t do, functions themselves act as a reinforcer of that. With support and encouragement from the outside small changes for people being heard can make a big difference in the corporate culture.
I think that intrapreneur-to-intrapreneur links would not just improve systemic impacts, it would also help intrapreneurs feel better supported. Being part of a community of people who share your values is fairly straightforward among social entrepreneurs. But in the corporate world, not everyone around you is as interested in social and environmental impact as in financial impact, because that's how their performance metrics are set up for annual reviews, or how the company is judged in the stock market, etc.
So to the extent that a community exists where intrapreneurs can share their frustrations and failures as well as their successes, and feel supported by their fellow intrapreneurs - that's equally valuable.
absolutely Zahid - we're starting to look at this with Mix-Fits, Mix-Fitters are people who may have ideas of their own, want to support others ideas from within organisations.
I may be stating the obvious and I know I've come in late to the discussion, but in my experience, social intrapreneurs and social entrepreneurs have different starting points. I've worked with both, in corporations, in the not for profit sector and with those that are finding new ways of doing business with hybrid business models.
The social intrapreneurs I've worked with have come from the perspective of wanting to change the way the company does their 'core' business, having had some kind of "aha" moment and seen that they can do something, cheaper, better, quicker or innovative and make social or environmental change. The social entrepreneurs I've worked with start from the environmental or social change perspective
Awesome Kirstie! Hadn't seen Mix-fits before. Looks like a great organization.
I like your point about technology: The greater connectedness we all operate in does have some profound implications on how we do our work--and we are still figuring out exactly what those implications are.
Also true--I agree innovators need to keep pushing towards where we need to go. But without that context of "creating the new mainstream" rather than "creating a new sub-division" within an existing mainstream, we risk fragmenting ourselves further.
Social intrapreneurs and social entrepreneurs operate in different environments with overlapping, albeit somewhat different, skillsets. The Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility (doughtycentre.info) launched its paper on the enabling environment for social intrapreneurism last week and this can be found at http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/dinamic-content/media/carers%20a%20businness%20responsibility%20and%20social%20opportunity%20Ec%20april13.pdf as well as being attached to this message. One very important set of skills for social intrapreneurs is the capacity to form external "cross-border" relationships between companies and external partners such as NGOs. This is not easy, especially if there is corporate resistance to such relationships. For social entrepreneurs, building those cross-border/cross-sector relationships is central to their success (albeit from a different environment). There is a lot these two groups of individuals - who share a common purpose to create positive social impact through innovation, but starting from different worlds - can learn from each other.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for this live segment of the discussion, including Katharine Bierce and Jeff Raderstrong (you can connect with them on Twitter at @kbierce and @jraders, respectively).
This discussion will stay open - so please do continue to post your comments and insights!
Thanks for these resources, Melody. I'll ask you a question I posed earlier in the discussion: Do you think there is value in making a distinction between intrapreneurs and others within a company interested in developing innovative solutions? I think if we make a second class of employees ("intrapreneurs") we risk creating a world where we have the "social intrapreneur" department (similar to today's CSR departments), rather than companies full of individuals looking to create social value in all aspects of company operations. We do need leaders pushing to change corporate culture, but why do that from a position of a newly-created role? Why not just encourage traditional managers to look for these areas of growth?
Thank Jeff! I was watching the Skoll “dare to dream” this morning and have been reflecting on this. Someone mentioned a “global neural network” which resonated very strongly!
Completely agree and given the rate of technological growth even our speculations may be well off! That being said its important to visualise and ask radical questions. We are all about testing - no absolutes, just what happens when…
My radical question is what happens when we remove the functions, roles and processes from the organisation and just leave the people, how can we reframe that collective intelligence?
Love that question!! I think a lot about the organizational structures of the future. We are seeing more and more small organizations spring up in a very open and "networked" fashion. (My org, UnSectored, is one of them: We aren't incorporated, we have no governing documents, yet we still get a lot of stuff done.) Technology is certainly enabling this, but I think it'd be foolish for us to say it was technology that created it--at the end of the day it's the people who want to operate in this way.
Agree, Jeff.. corporate culture will never really change until traditional managers can step out of their traditional roles and embrace the VALUE of being a "social intrepreneur" assuming that upper level management will support such a shift in corporate culture and "retrain" their managers to see business from another perspective..