Master These Five Gears to Succeed at Intrapreneurship

One of the main reasons companies fail at intrapreneurship is their lack of understanding of the 5 key elements that must be in place to succeed at launching new businesses or lines of businesses within a corporate environment. I shared a picture of the 5 gears of intrapreneurship last week that generated some interest so I thought I would follow it up with a blog to explain the five gears. If any of these five gears are not in place in your organization, your chances of winning at intrapreneurship are slim. Conversely, mastering these five gears and paying special attention to the fifth gear will stack the odds in your favour.

Gear 1. Managing the innovation process

This is often one area that is mistaken for intrapreneurship but innovation and intrapreneurship are two very different activities. In Winning at Intrapreneurship I define intrapreneurship as the ability to monetize an innovation and turn it into a new source of revenue and profit for the parent company. This first gear focuses on how companies must master the process of generating great ideas, sifting through them to arrive at the final few, and selecting those that have the highest chances of success.

Gear 2. Matching core competencies to new opportunities

This second gear focuses on understanding how to analyze your core competencies and objectively assess those that can be leveraged to enter a new market or accelerate the launch of a new business idea. The power of intrapreneurship comes from carefully selecting what can be leveraged from the parent companies and mastering how that can be translated into a competitive advantage by the startup.

Gear 3. Launching new products or services

Even with the first two gears in place, companies wanting to succeed at intrapreneurship must master the activities of launching new products and services. There are proven methodologies in place to do this so as to effectively position your new offer. This activity gets complicated when you are launching a brand new product into the world or entering a new market. In that case, borrowing from gear 4 might make sense.

Gear 4. Best practices from the world of entrepreneurship

In Winning at Intrapreneurship I make it a point to differentiate intrapreneurship from entrepreneurship. Intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship certainly share many elements in common but intrapreneurship has its own specific set of challenges such as dealing with constraints imposed by the parent company, corporate governance, company targets and KPIs to a name but a few. However, there are many best practices in the world of entrepreneurship that can be borrowed by intrapreneurs. The lean startup concept behind the minimal viable product (MVP) and the business canvas are two good examples.

Gear 5. Overcoming corporate culture to accelerate the corporate startup

In my experience, the fifth gear is often the most misunderstood. Even in cases where companies have properly prepared for and positioned the first four gears, they can and will struggle if this fifth gear is not well honed. The intrapreneur evolves within an existing culture represented by established systems, processes, and ways of conducting business. He/she must also beg and borrow resources and support from the parent company. In the book, I refer to the 12 labors to overcome corporate culture and achieve startup success because understanding how your own organization lives and breathes its culture as reflected in these 12 labors and then using the recommended tools to proactively prepare your organization for the intrapreneurship challenge will greatly improve your chances of success.