Intrapreneurship - Time to nurture in-house talent
By Renjith VP, SiliconIndia   |    15 Comments
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Intrapreneurship - Time to nurture in-house talent
Bangalore: If we consider some of the hottest keywords in the corporate world, entrepreneurship will be surely among the top list. Such is the reach and command it posses these days. Today millions around the world claim that they are entrepreneurs. But there is another keyword that hasn't got nearly the amount of attention it deserves - Intrapreneurship. Putting it simple, an intrapreneur is an employee who is given the freedom and financial support to create new products, services and systems, who does not have to follow the company's usual protocols or routines. We are not divulging from the fact that many major enterprises like Virgin, General Motors, IBM, Google and AT&T have encouraged and reaped the rewards of intrapreneurial employees. But now that India is a global focus and an innovative hub of experimentation, are Indian enterprises really nurturing what intrapreneurship demands for? There are many organizations which have set tremendous market growth and huge leaps in business by letting their employees free and nurturing intrapreneurship. Sir Robert Branson, founder of Virgin group once gave the reins to Joe Ferry, a young designer to solve the design problems posed by specification for upper class cabin in their airlines. And result - the herring bone configured private sleeper suites that came from outside the box creativity to put them years ahead of the pack in business. One of the most commonly cited intrapreneurship success stories is 3M Corporation, which has a policy that allows employees to spend 15 percent of their working hours developing their own business or product ideas. This policy led to the creation of Post-It-Notes and other successful products by 3M employees. The need for innovation within organizations is a topic of much debate today in India as entrepreneurship has finally caught the world's attention. If entrepreneurial firms change the business paradigms and make us see products and services in a different manner, then why can't existing organizations with their tremendous wealth and resources foster innovation much more readily? Many Indian IT giants like Wipro and Infosys has intrapreneurial structures but are not yet fully result oriented. This is because people don't always think of leaders within a company - the managers, executives and the CEO as people who enable others. Once a CEO becomes Chief Enabling Officer, then Indian firms will produce intrapreneurs who would gradually grow into entrepreneurs. Google news which has caught so much attention and readership is the result of an intrapreneurship opportunity given to an employee who is interestingly an Indian named Krishna Bharat. In fact, Google lets you spend 20 percent of your time on a project that you like and their by enabling and nurturing intrapreneurs. Many innovative ideas and products of Google have come out in that 20 percent time. The service launched by Infosys Technologies called 'ShoppingTrip360', to help retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to achieve visibility in in-store activity is an intrapreneurial effort. It is high time for other Indian companies to follow this model. Keeping in view changing management needs and emerging scenarios, various MBA institutes are getting cued in to the trend. Some b-schools have the global entrepreneurship programme, wherein 20 top entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs will be invited to the campus. Business organizations of the country should get through with that typical ego at work and create a culture that provides employees with both freedom and encouragement to develop new ideas. Support for intrapreneurship must start with top executives and work its way down in the form of policies, programs, and reward systems. As Richard Branson puts it "Perhaps the greatest thing about an enable intrapreneurship form is that often everyone becomes enabled in what they are doing and they would feel like they own the companies." In a country like India, isn't it high time to stop making employees feel that they are working for someone else and create a sense of belongingness.