Intrapreneuship-Global
Many big companies had benefitted from the ideas of their employees that not just bringing innovation but adding to its revenue stream. Several global cases have been renowned especially to big companies’ history on how their respective intrapreneurs made the business to be the pioneer of a certain business idea.
- Most renowned “Skunk Works”
- Spencer Silver and Art Fry’s development of post-it notes at 3 M company Modern Day
Global Case
Intrapreneurs take existing businesses and transform them. Whereas an entrepreneur would take an idea and build a business around it, an intrapreneur takes an existing business and branches it out into uncharted waters. In a September 1985 Newsweek article, Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, “The Macintosh team was what is commonly known as intrapreneurship; only a few years before the term was coined—a group of people going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company. (http://infospace. ischool. syr. edu/2012/06/25/intrapreneurship-what-who-and-why-its-important/) Intrapreneurship is being practiced in a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship. Many big companies had benefitted from the ideas of their employees that not just bringing innovation but adding to its revenue stream.
Several global cases have been renowned especially to big companies’ history on how their respective intrapreneurs made the business to be the pioneer of a certain business idea.
Skunk Works is an official alias for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. This working group within the well-known defense manufacturer has been responsible for the development of numerous cutting edge aircraft and other innovations since 1943, when it was established to work on secret projects for the United States Air Force.
In some companies, a working group of intrapreneurs may be referred to as a “skunkworks project” in reference to Lockheed’s famous subdivision. (http://www. wisegeek. com/what-is-an-intrapreneur. htm#did-you-know) Skunk Works is responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs, including the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk, and the F-22 Raptor. Currently its largest officially known project is the F-35 Lightning II, which will be used in the air forces of several countries.
Spencer Silver and Art Fry’s development of post-it notes at 3m is also an impressive example of intrapreneurship. Way back in when a 3m employee couldn’t keep his hymns marked properly in his church choir book. After attempting various methods, he decided he’d try using some non-permanent adhesive that was available at his workplace. By placing this adhesive on the back of his markers, he found he could keep them secured in place and then easily peel them off when he was done.
Modern day * Intel also has a tradition of implementing intrapreneurship. Intel established an in-house “new business initiative” in 1998 to bootstrap new businesses that employees propose, regardless of whether the concepts had anything to do with Intel’s core chip-making business. In contrast to a venture capital program that Intel has had in place for a decade, the new business initiative provides financing for businesses that the company’s own employees start. The idea for the whole thing came from our employees, who kept telling us they wanted to do entrepreneurial things,” said Craig Barrett, president and chief executive officer of Intel. “They saw that we were putting a lot of investments into external companies and said that we should be investing in our own ideas. ” (http://www. utdallas. edu/~chasteen/Reinventing%20the%20intrapreneur. htm)
Steve Jobs and a group of 20 Apple Computer engineers created the Macintosh computer without “adult supervision,” mainly to compete with Apple’s mainstay, the Apple II — not to mention Mr.
Jobs’s nemesis, Apple CEO John Scully
Microsoft Microsoft , one of the companies that poached great Xerox technology, has suffered from a brain drain that may pose a bigger threat than any U. S. Supreme Court decision, as veteran executives use their own millions to start their own firms. That’s why both of these companies are now emphasizing internal entrepreneurial efforts. They are among the following ten corporations that have made intrapreneurship a keystone of their business. Seamus Blackley, a game designer, joined Microsoft in early 1999.
His last big project, “Trespasser,” a dinosaur-shooting game based on Michael Crichton’s The Lost World (Knopf, 1997), bombed in the market. He figured he’d keep a low profile as a graphics programmer, but then he dreamed up a new idea on an airplane flight and quickly banded with three other engineers to create a video game console using personal computer technology. (http://www. utdallas. edu/~chasteen/Reinventing%20the%20intrapreneur. htm)
Google is also known to be intrapreneur friendly, allowing their employees to spend up to 20% of their time to pursue projects of their choice.
