Intrapreneurship: Meaning and Importance in Business

A manager in a company who encourages innovative product, modified development and latest marketing skills are known as Intrapreneurs. He acts like an entrepreneur and also works in a large organization.

To know further about this managing duty, let us quickly explore this.

Intrapreneurship

An intrapreneur is an employee who is responsible for developing an innovative idea or pitching a fruitful project within a company. The intrapreneur may not come with the risks or reap the rewards of an entrepreneur but the intrapreneur has access to the company’s resources and capabilities of an established setup. Intrapreneurs are the employees of a company who are designated to work on a special idea or an important project. With the given time and freedom, they are expected to develop the project as an entrepreneur would.

However, they do not work singly, intrapreneurs have the resources and capabilities of the firm at their need.

Entrepreneur Meaning

An individual who creates a brand new business, bearing most of the risks and also enjoying most of the rewards is termed as an “Entrepreneur”. The entrepreneur is generally seen as an innovator who is the source of new ideas, goods and services and business procedures. Entrepreneurs play a leading role in any economy. With the use of skills and initiative, they anticipate the needs and bring new ideas to the market and the society at large. Entrepreneurs who are successful in taking on the risks of a start-up are rewarded not only with profits but also with fame and assured continued growth opportunities at their hands. 

Entrepreneurship is one of the resources economists categorized as essential to production, the other three being the land, natural resources and labour/capital. An entrepreneur combines the first three of these to facilitate their working in manufacturing goods or provide services.

Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur

Intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs have altogether different objectives. An entrepreneur visualises in creating a company from the scratch or zero. While an intrapreneur has the later vision for an already established company. Their vision may involve remarkable changes according to the company traditions, processes or products. The intrapreneur typically has direct applicability to his skills and experience to serve in his job.

For intrapreneurs, it is to work within an existing framework which offers many advantages to them. The main benefit is that the organization provides them with the resources they need which include human resources, a legal team and financial department. Also, intrapreneurship enables the professionals to use the funding from their organization. On the other hand, Entrepreneurship may offer more freedom as entrepreneurs can determine the work culture, schedule and even the basic dress code for their business. 

Types of Intrapreneurship

There are two types of intrapreneurship:

1. Added Value

The first type of intrapreneurship is directly linked to the core activity of the organization. Intrapreneurial ideas will add value to the company, thus they foster innovation and pave the way for growth. They are appointed to add value to compliment the parent company in some way. The intrapreneurs carefully analyse what society needs and develop their project according to that.

2. Spin-Off

The parent company may choose the project to not create a new company, but rather a different entity within the company’s ambit This varies greatly from one intrapreneurial project to another. At times, simply sharing of resources lead to a successful project. 

Social Intrapreneurship

In the era where business meets sustainable development along with social responsibilities, a new kind of manager emerges as the social intrapreneur. A social intrapreneur is also an entrepreneurial employee who develops a profitable new product or service or business model which creates value for the society at large.

Social intrapreneurs help employers meet commitments and they create value for customers and the communities. Some companies see social intrapreneurs as one way to stay competitive from others in the market.

Social intrapreneurs start initiatives within the existing institutions:

Corporate, education, public or non-profit organizations create social or environmental benefit while moving the institution’s mission and goals forward. They use these existing infrastructures and organisational resources as levers to deliver a social value on a large scale.

Intrapreneurship is an important concept, though not recently, Steve argues that every company should formulate their HR team to hire such managers which provide benefit to the company in the long run.