How Your Business Can Benefit From Intrapreneurship?

What Is Intrapreneurship?

Everyone has heard and is aware of the term “Entrepreneurship”, however not many have heard of “Intrapreneurhsip”. It is a new concept that has helped individuals to grow within a company, especially those who are blessed with entrepreneurial traits. If one has to draw a basic difference between both the terms i.e. entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, then where former one is more on the lines of setting up your business and taking up certain financial risks with a clear motivation of making profits; later one is something similar like an entrepreneur, however it is more like being on a job. In general terms, an entrepreneur cannot be a intrapreneur whereas an intrapreneur cannot be an entrepreneur. While intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship are almost similar in certain ways, as mentioned above, they are quite different from each other in lot many aspects, however in broader terms, intrapreneurship is nothing but preparing an individual to be an entrepreneur.

Since intrapreneurship is driven by entrepreneurship skills such as risk tasking and decision making ability, an intrapreneur is an employee that is self-motivated and proactive. An intrapreneur is an employee of an organization who can utilize and use his creative skills and entrepreneurial skills to achieve the goals of the organization and Intrapreneurhsip is nothing but a system that allows an employee to act and behave like an entrepreneur either within a company or other organization.

Intrapreneurhsip is a fairly new concept however it has gained quite a majority of votes in the United Kingdom. Lot of organizations, mainly large companies are opting for the same in order to motivate their employees to take a well-informed and proactive steps towards the overall productivity of the organization and not only it helps to hone the entrepreneurial skills of the employees but also makes them feel important and worthwhile and thus Intrapreneurhsip helps to eliminate one of the main reasons of under-productivity. The very basic driving force behind Intrapreneurhsip is motivation i.e. an employee has to be self-motivated to take calculated risks and proactive steps.

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As mentioned above, more and more companies are retorting to this very new concept of intrapreneurship, which demands an employee to take certain risks and proactive steps while being a part of a company or an organization and while they do so, the organization prepares itself for collateral i.e. employees don’t have to bear the loss as a result of failure; rather it is the organization that has to bear all the losses and here comes the best part that as an intrapreneur, you still get paid for your work, which is definitely not the case with entrepreneurs.

How Your Business Can Benefit From Intrapreneurship?

What does it take for a business to grow and excel in its respective area? Is it money or strategic planning or successful execution of those plans or human resources it is going to rely upon? Well, the recipe of having or running a successful business is a calculated amalgamation of all of these mentioned above. For example, a business having a strategic planning and implementation by best of the employees cannot run for long in the absence of monetary funds, similarly a business loaded with money but lacking in the area of efficient human resources is for sure destined to fall flat on its face. However, it will not be very wrong to say that ultimately it is the human resources you are going to hire, that is going to run the business for you and in order to have the system going as you have planned, it is important to hire motivated employees.

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Pool of Innovative Ideas and Experiments with Intrapreneurship

Coming to employees, it is very simple to understand their driving force. It is a natural and obvious human psychology that a person feels motivated only when he or she feels important i.e. if he or she is allowed to make decisions and voice their opinion on a matter. It is not very different in the case of employees as well. An employee will be motivated to give his or her best at work only if he or she feels appreciated there and Intrapreneurhsip nails this very point of employee psychology. Large companies are not very open when it comes to innovation and experiment; however they have come to the realization that a successful business needs enterprising minds with pool of innovative ideas and experiments and with the help of Intrapreneurship, you can untap the talent existing well within your office and help your business in the following ways:

1. Access to a new world of ideas: Every single thing that we around us today have started with a simple idea or thought or desire. Today the world is moving so fast that it is humanly impossible to utilize each and every single idea and thus is better to save any unused idea for the future. However, this is where most of the companies lack where companies follow the traditional methods and rely on few to do the thinking, however companies who are open to experiments and are pro-intrapreneurial, encourage every employee to come up with new ideas and whether it is working on an existing product or creating a new one, under the intrapreneurship system, they never run out of ideas.
2. Leads to innovations: Like money or monetary funds, innovation is no less than oxygen to a business, in the absence of which a business will die its slow death and it will not be wrong to say that growth of any organization depends on happy marriage of Intrapreneurhsip and innovation. Organizations are working on providing an internal platform to the employees where they can share and present their ideas and thoughts for an existing or a new product or service or to seek any guidance etc. By their very basic nature, intrapreneurs have the quality of leadership in them and they know what they want to do and how to achieve the desired results. As an organization, what you need to help them is support and encouragement.
3. It helps to identify problem-solvers: As mentioned above, intrapreneurs are motivated employees with risk taking ability and entrepreneurial skills. They also have an eye to look out for possible solutions of an existing problem and are very keen to find better effective ways to accomplish tasks and to provide solutions in order to increase the productivity. As an organization, you have lot to gain from the intrapreneurship and not much to lose.
4. Sense of achievement: As mentioned above, intrapreneurship gives a sense of achievement to its employees and thus works best both for the organization and for the employees and it is a no-brainer that a successful business can be build only by happy employees. Intrapreneurhsip helps you to identify and nuture the thinking tanks of your organization and when as an organization, you accept, acknowledge and appreciate ideas of your employees; you not only instill a sense of belonging and achievement in your employees but also lift up their morale and attitude towards themselves and their work. Intrapreneurhsip runs on the simple fact, i.e. sense of achievement and the drive to run the organization as your own.
5. Increase in productivity: As mentioned above, intrapreneurs, by their very basic nature, will always find out a better and efficient way of working on a problem and thus will ensure better productivity and are thus described and known as problem solvers. Also, if you have managed to find out the intrapreneurs in your organization, you have already won half the battle, because they will not only motivate their teams to become driven and goal oriented but will also keep a meticulous track of the workflow and find out glitches, if any and consistently come up with the possible solutions to improve the overall productivity.
6. Stability: For a business to grow and excel, it is very important for it to find its ground. Apart from this, when a business is driven by innovative ideas and methods to improve the operations, it achieves its aim i.e. financial stability in no time. However, for an organization to encourage intrapreneurship amongst employees, it has to be open to new ideas and thoughts of its employees.
7. Motivation: As mentioned above, if an organization is open to new ideas and methods of its employees, later not only work double hard to ensure a better productivity, but also gets a feeling of belongingness with the organization and nothing could be more better for an organization than a motivated employee. Thus if an organization wants to grown and excel, then it should adapt to the intrapreneurship system and encourage its employees to innovate and think by providing them a right conducive environment in order to foster and nurture new ideas, by giving them required access to the resources. Apart from this, it is also important to support trial and error so that there is no fear of failure amongst employees and they can go all out and come up with best possible solutions.

About the author

Sumit Agarwal
Sumit Agarwal (ACMA ACA India), the Managing partner of dns accountants is a highly respected accountant with expertise in helping owner-managed businesses.