Prioritizing Intrapreneurship: Advantages for Your Organization

If you’re familiar with the Facebook “like” button, Google’s “Gmail,” the Sony Playstation, and even LinkedIn, then you're already aware of just how world-changing intrapreneurship can be (Ok, you caught us. LinkedIn was definitely not an intrapreneurial idea, we were just hoping you would give us a follow). What once started as a "crazy" idea from the curious employee who liked to tinker in the back, combined with strong will and dedication from company leaders, burst into billion-dollar innovations.

Use your imagination and think what you could do within your organization if you cultivated a culture where your employees comfortably shared their ideas and had the opportunity to transform them into a reality. Or, if imagination isn’t your strong suit, you can start by reading this list of intrapreneurship advantages and disadvantages.  

Advantages of Organizational Intrapreneurship

Promoting intrapreneurship or recognizing employees who demonstrate an intrapreneurial spirit can transform your company. When you encourage intrapreneurship, your company as a whole will reap the benefits.

• Everyone wins: Perhaps the best intrapreneurship advantage is that everybody wins: You’ll embody even greater traits and characteristics of being a leader in your company while cultivating a lasting, inspiring culture. Your employer has a dedicated team focused on innovation that will help the company grow. Your employees can unleash their full potential. Innovation always opens the door for new opportunities.

• Company growth inside and out: The goal of intrapreneurship is to create the entrepreneurial mindset and cultivate an innovative infrastructure needed to support growth. Innovation is the critical element and framework for providing aggressive growth, leading to:

• • Increased market share and profits—the bottom line.
  • Recruiting and retaining the best employees—the bottom line in human form.
  • New and improved products and services.

• Greater stability and resources: Intrapreneurship allows you to take on all the benefits of entrepreneurship without as much risk. No one has to leave their current position, invest their own money, or essentially start from scratch. You can test the waters of transformation while having access to more resources and a larger platform.

• Unchanging scheduled hours: Entrepreneurship can take over your entire life. Growing a business from the ground up is close to a 24/7 gig. However, intrapreneurship is inside your company, right? So you and your employees are still working according to company hours. You can still switch your brain off in the evenings, as we all do after hours (kick back and relax, you deserve it).

The advantages of intrapreneurial projects are they don't solely apply to the corporate bottom line. They create opportunities for people to think outside the box and make waves with innovation. However, rewards almost always come paired with risks.

Potential Risks of Intrapreneurship

As with anything else in business (and the world), there are challenges and disadvantages. Anything worth doing bears some risk, so don't let these change your mind. We just want to keep you informed.

• Cultural problems and resistance to change: An intrapreneurial endeavor requires setting the culture (encouraging and inspiring) and following a sound implementation strategy. Many people see the opportunities and change as intrapreneurial advantages, but some people are "stuck in their ways." Usually, that phrase applies to those closer to the end of their career or maybe an old dog that won't learn any new tricks, but in any case, the idea of change might just freak them out. They've been comfortable doing what they do, day in and day out, and don't see why that has to be different.
  
  Change is one of the least understood management disciplines.  Most studies report a 60% – 70% failure rate when it comes to change initiatives. Risk-averse cultures and resistance to change can hinder an organization’s ability to grow.
  
  Another part of this disadvantage can refer to higher management. Again, they may feel there is no need for change. Maybe they just feel left out. Either way, there's potential for feelings of resentment to build up without the proper internal marketing strategy.

• Lack of resource control: Being funded by your company’s cash flows can be great—when cash flow is great. However, there's always uncertainty when you rely on someone else for money. If the company has a bad quarter (or longer), resources dry up, and your innovation management endeavor is probably high on the list of projects to be cut. 
  
  Your human-form resources can be taken away to work on other priority projects. Employees can have their responsibilities shifted around to address the immediate problem rather than work on a long-term solution. There isn’t necessarily any ill will—it’s just a matter of business politics.

• Leadership conflicts: Employee intrapreneurs still have superiors, and sometimes superiority shifts among the higher-ups. Leaders can divert the attention of these motivated employees to other prioritized projects, suppress innovation, squash think tanks, refuse funding and resources, and simply keep bottom-up ideas from gaining real momentum.
  
  In addition, multiple leaders above can derail the strategic direction and overall productivity of your projects. Employees will get distracted and confused because they can't keep up with the constant shifting and whom they're supposed to be taking direction from.

• Lack of ownership: While intrapreneurs are shielded from major failures and losses, they also do not get to take ownership of major successes. Intrapreneurs run the risk of their ideas becoming successful and boosting the company, yet they do not directly profit from that success.

Prioritizing intrapreneurship in your organization can help you create incredible opportunities without running risks as significant as entrepreneurship holds, but there are still risks. What we want you to understand without a doubt is that you can have a substantial impact while creating lasting change and scaling innovation. Intrapreneurship can change the whole trajectory of your company and your life.

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