You’re thinking about starting a business, but you don’t want to take any financial risks. Stability as an employee suits you, but would you like to have your own projects within the organization to ensure your leadership qualities and develop your creativity and initiative? You could be an intrapreneur!
The concept of the intrapreneur was defined in 1976 by Gifford Pinchot. This should enable large companies to better encourage innovation and seize opportunities that their natural inertia might otherwise miss.
That said, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs share certain qualities: creativity, innovation, perseverance, discipline, autonomy. In both cases, they are motivated, inspired, passionate, and energetic individuals. The difference lies mainly in the degree of risk taken by one of the parties: the first manage on its own, the second benefits from the support and infrastructure of the company for which it works.
An intrapreneur can turn ideas into concrete activities within their organization, creating new markets, products or services, and sometimes even creating a new entity. In some cases, employees with strong initiative and good ideas can propose projects to the company’s management. In other cases, the idea may be initiated by management. A growing number of companies, especially in the technology, finance, and service sectors, are encouraging their employees to engage in intrapreneurship. In fact, for her, it is a question of taking advantage of “the positive, individualistic and non-programmable deviance” of individuals whose certain creative skills cannot be expressed or perceived and valued in the straitjacket and routines of the classic organization of a company.
However, intrapreneurship can be opposed to the company’s short- or medium-term vision and profitability indicators regarding innovation.
Hence the need for large companies to create and maintain a delicate balance between organization and disorganization to bring about innovation!
Références :
Frédérique Blondel et Valentine Georget, « L’intrapreneuriat, un subtil équilibre entre organisation et désorganisation » [archive], sur The Conversation, 10 septembre 2023.
Armand Hatchuel, Gilles Garel, Philippe Le Masson et Benoît Weil, « L’intrapreneuriat, compétence ou symptôme ? Vers de nouvelles organisations de l’innovation », Revue française de gestion, vol. 35, no 195, 16 juin 2009, p. 159–174
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