Setting Sail for Intrapreneurship
Now that you have finished reading this book and have the formula to build intrapreneurship in your organization, you are probably wondering, “Where do I start?” The Intrapreneurship Formula is a practical guide for leaders to understand the building blocks of intrapreneurship. I hope this book has stimulated your thought process, but I want it to do more. I hope it stimulates you to take action. Consider reading it to be merely the beginning of your journey, when you set up your organization for sustainable innovation by empowering your employees.
The pace of change has accelerated. Once, corporates were built to last for a century. Now, they might only last a decade. The pace of change is driven by the disruptive innovations brought about by the era of Industry 5.0. Today, how you empower your employees by building and managing intrapreneurship can make a difference to your business’s survival and profitability in this rapidly changing environment.
You do not need to be the sole innovator for your business. Imagine that all your employees are proactively engaged in discovering new value. Their ideas could be the future drivers of your business. As a leader, your job is to be the corporate architect and craft an ecosystem that offers the components to help evaluate and develop those ideas. There’s no doubt that the work required to build intrapreneurship is extensive but the return is worth the investment. It can open up new business opportunities and create competitive advantages that the management team might never have thought of.
Many leaders have found it challenging to build intrapreneurship because they think there is a lack of creative talent in their organization. The truth is that these talents simply haven’t been identified. There are a list of traits of potential intrapreneurs mentioned in this book, which you can use to start identifying intrapreneurs in your workforce and begin training them. Some leaders may say that innovation activities seem chaotic and uncertain, and find it challenging to manage. But this is a misunderstanding common to those who have not found the Intrapreneurship Formula. It is, in fact, a disciplined process and needs to be complemented with a systematic approach. There are also clear metrics you can set to measure intrapreneurship.
Now I suggest you start by taking a moment to reflect. Do you recognize the challenges brought by Industry 5.0? Is your corporation under pressure to change? How do you manage intrapreneurship in your organization currently? Are your current practices set up for sustainable innovation? Are you committed to investing in empowering employees? Your honest answers matter. They will determine whether this book is mere weekend reading or will be the springboard for transforming your organization.
Next, engage your key leadership team. Give them this book and ask them to read it. Regroup with them to discuss the changing environment and the challenges brought by Industry 5.0. Ask them to share the disruption they have seen across industries, including the one in which your organization operates. Ask them to share their feelings about being told that one in two corporations will not maintain their leading position in the next 10 years. Help them understand that innovation is required for survival and that they will play a key role in creating the ecosystem.
Once you have senior leaders’ buy-in, you should start to understand the existing state of intrapreneurship in your organization. You can do so by running the assessments in Chapter 2. Conduct Assessment I: Level of intrapreneurship in your corporate to discover existing assets, strengths, and areas of improvement. You should also engage your employees using Assessment II: The intrapreneur in you to discover your people’s potential intrapreneurship traits and skills. Make an inventory of all the assessment results and form an action plan in partnership with your leadership team and HR. You can find the practical guide by referring to the relevant chapters in the book:
• Understand the traits of intrapreneurs to identify them in your employees (Chapter 3).
• Learn about components of the corporate ecosystem of innovation (Chapter 4).
• Create an intrapreneur-friendly culture (Chapter 5).
• Build the corporate infrastructure to cultivate intrapreneurship (Chapter 6).
• Understand the skills of successful intrapreneurs and provide this training to your employees (Chapter 7).
• Help your employees collaborate with intrapreneurs of different backgrounds (Chapter 8).
• Learn how to recruit and retain intrapreneurial talents (Chapter 9).
• Avoid the pitfalls that can kill intrapreneurship (Chapter 10).
You can find additional recommended resources at the end of the book. For tools, templates, further resources, and inquiries, visit the website at www.sandralam.me
Intrapreneurship of a large corporation seldom happens by accident. There are no happy coincidences of the kind sometimes enjoyed by startups. Intrapreneurship needs to be intentionally cultivated, nurtured, and constantly renewed. Top-down support and commitment from leaders play a significant role. Consider this book the starting point for transforming your organization.
Now is truly the best possible moment to take action. The next five to 10 years will see a big turnover in the ranks of leading corporates, providing exciting growth opportunities for outsiders that succeed at building sustainable innovation. The decisions you make today will determine the competitiveness, and even the survival, of your organization in decades to come. I hope you found this book helpful, and I wish you the best of luck as you drive your organization to success in the era of Industry 5.0.