Understanding Corporate Entrepreneurship and Development: A Practitioner View of Organizational Intrapreneurship

Question #10: What lessons did you learn from this venture that you will apply to your next corporate entrepreneurship venture? First, do not try to change a non-entrepreneurial corporation into an entrepreneur-loving business, especially when founders have moved on and only bureaucrats are minding the shop. Pursue new ideas below the radar. second, if you need the corporation's money, research, and/or patents to succeed with your idea, bring the project fully formed with financing/funds attached before ingratiating oneself to a partnering corporation.

Mr. Proudfoot's experiences seem to reinforce the research findings that it is essential for all levels of management to buy into the concept of corporate entrepreneurship. Most of the challenges he faced involved dealing with middle managers. Thus, companies hoping to nurture corporate entrepreneurship should clearly articulate goals and objectives. A project management approach to start-ups might be effective. The interview also reinforces that organizational commitment is as important as an employee's commitment when launching new ventures. There must be congruence between the company's goals and the intrinsic motives of the intrapreneur.

Training should be unstructured and innovative, which reinforces the beliefs of scholars. A structured approach to entrepreneurship training might actually douse the innovative spark that is the essence of entrepreneurship. Rather than training all aspiring intrapreneurs within an organization, it may be more appropriate to identify intrapreneur candidates and provide ongoing, yet unstructured training that will nurture their talents. This essentially creates a culture that nurtures the holistic development of intrapreneurship, rather than expecting new venture creation as a result of formal training.

Selection tests developed to identify prospects with intrapreneurial qualities would not be especially helpful when looking for entrepreneurial traits in workers, as entrepreneurial aptitude is generally self-identified. Overall, it takes a team of people to create an intrapreneurial organization; consequently, senior leaders must rely on all managers to cooperate in the realization of such a culture. Organizational leaders, just like independent entrepreneurs, must involve many formal and informal leaders throughout the firm to pursue the dream of an intrapreneurial firm and to sustain such a culture (Bouckenooghe, Cools, Vanderheyden, and Van den Broeck, 2005). Of course, as many scholars have devoted themselves to the quest of finding who is an entrepreneur, many more will continue to devote much time to finding what traits are necessary to be an intrapreneur? Whether one is a practitioner or academician, with regard to new research and the discovery of best practices, all parties must collaborate as do all successful entrepreneurs.

A colleague and a great intrapreneur by the name of Rick Pinelli once stated that he sees entrepreneurial organizations as having a diversity of people, change agents, and managers that can be categorized as shakers, movers, housekeepers, and lifers. According to Pinelli, such a categorization process can be logical, rational, and an efficient organizational structure. The following are a skeleton of Rick's initial thoughts and overall concept regarding shakers, movers, housekeepers, and lifers which can be further developed and researched in the future (Mujtaba, 2006a).