The idea of staying within a corporation and acting as if you are an entrepreneur and project leader is very intriguing. From the standpoint of a company there are many benefits of having intrapreneurs. After all it is the intrapreneurs that introduce new products, processes and services which enable the company to grow and profit. I have worked with the idea of changing the corporate culture within large organizations to allow a place for the intrapreneur.
Corporations can provide many of the facilities and benefits that are supportive of intrapreneurs. Some of the benefits include the networks of supportive suppliers, a depth of proprietary technology, and all kinds of personnel resources, and marketing clout. But after having the ideas it is sometimes difficult to move the ideas from concept to a profitable reality. Getting to a profitable reality creates the business project that corporations need to succeed.
There is an element within corporations that is normally not touched by the intrapreneurial ventures. The information services area within companies are not normally the domain from which corporations are able to profit. For a long period of time information services was relegated to support the understood needs of data processing within the corporation. In fact in many corporations the business departments will not talk to the systems areas primarily because it would not be beneficial for them. Some business departments do not pass all of their requirements to the systems areas because the systems areas simply do not produce the results needed by the business departments.
The business departments do not have the time to see into the future and determine the systems that they need to help the corporation move into the future. So many of the tasks that are needed are satisfied by small incremental advances and by purchased systems. Purchased systems require the corporation to change to fit some specific way of doing business. These fixes are only temporary and cause much havoc within the corporations and most often do not meet the future needs of the corporation.
By forming special intrapreneurial processes between the systems departments and the business departments the corporations can take advantage of the entrepreneurial spirit of their people. This spirit builds upon the existing system functions within the corporation but at the same time fulfills the future requirements for information services.
The systematization processes within corporations have been formed for many years. The intrapreneurial spirit is lacking in these services but major delivery changes would be disastrous to corporations. So it was refreshing to understand that intrapreneurship would support the future needs of the corporation. The process of intrapreneurship within systems closes the gap between the customer, senior management, business management, and the systems area. The intrapreneurial project management process supplies important information normally lacking within the system project management processes. Further the iterative implementation process uses the benefits of either the spiral implementation methodology or the waterfall development methodology. In terms of the documentation many of the processes provide information for both understanding and supplying the information needed for the development methodologies. There are several advantages to the processes and procedures of intrapreneurial development.
The intrapreneurs continue to use corporate systems but incrementally add new features through existing software. This provides the advantage of simple conversions form existing systems to new systems. The new features satisfy customers, senior management, business departments, and technology requirements of systems departments. New features provide the necessary intrapreneurs benefits to the business.
Systems intrapreneurship needs to take advantage of the bigness of the corporations and the innovation of the intrapreneurial team. It is true that innovation almost never happens in large organizations without the individuals or small groups that are passionately dedicated to making it happen. When innovation occurs within systems the goals of the corporation are also enhanced. Innovation within systems helps corporations gain technical competitive advantages and may even satisfy the needs of an information-hungry bureaucracy.
As Gifford Pinchot said in his book "Intrapreneuring":
Consider what happened as we moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age. The United States remained a major agricultural producer despite the industrial revolution, but the way we grew crops changed. Today a larger and larger portion of agricultural value is created by industrial means. Farm labor has become a tiny part of a giant complex of industries that make tractors, agricultural chemicals, fuels, veterinary medicines, and rubber boots. A similar change will occur in the industrial sector as we enter what is called the Information Age. The information explosion, will not eliminate industrial production in the United States, but it will change how it is done and change the factors that produce industrial success.
We are now in a competitive world wherein innovation is becoming as important as productivity in production. It is necessary to find new ways to use the information to better business and production. We are in an innovation age.
Invention is the first step in innovation. When invention is done then the new idea needs to be turned into business successes. When information innovations are implemented they need to be made into competitive business and competitive technical advantages as business successes.
The information explosion encourages businesses to adopt systems using innovators as equals with business partners forming an informal support system. Intrapreneurial innovation provides the information needs to manage and create solutions for critical business issues. Critical technology issues drive innovative business uses. Systems intrapreneuring shifts systems development to the innovative individuals. The intrapreneurial project management process builds high level solutions using advances of individual, innovative, project managers and their teams. The process provides a high level of design reuse, tool creation, and system reuse. The process creates a geometrically increasing implementation process. The goals of this process provide corporations with ever increasing ways of using information to create business and technical competitive advantages.
The intrapreneurial project manager already knows the importance of the role of being an intrapreneur. In the information age the corporation needs intrapreneurial project managers to join together and identify the needs of the customer that drive the requirements of the corporation
