Disruptive intrapreneur: the pending side of disruptive entrepreneur

Among many of the buzz words around, “entrepreneur” and “disrupt” tend to get an ever growing and massive exposure, usually associated with “unicorns”. These are the modern attributes found in the realm of start-up.

For a change, let’s look on the other side of the business fence: the “seem-to-be-dull-and-plagued-with-soon-to be-dead-dinosaurs”. I’m speaking of companies which are not falling into the category of start-up (either as structures or as corporate attitude). On that side of the fence, not a single month passes without grim news of an ex-incumbent giant falling to its knees: Nokia being maybe among the saddest and latest examples. From the outside, it looks like these big corporations are just doomed, pushed down from the stock market altar by fearless, more reactive, cooler, younger companies (the “start-up”).

Salvation seems impossible from this angle: too slow, too big, too deeply rooted onto old fashion habits. They seem unable to gain new territories and incapable of maintaining their positions. Doom is a doorstep away. That’s until intrapreneur kicks in.

What is an intrapreneur?

Like an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur dismisses status quo and seeks to invent, create and to develop product/services for an uncapped or partially addressed opportunity.

Unlike an entrepreneur, he will not be able to start from a blank page, having to deal with the overall structure and habits (such as the infamous auto-pilot mode: “we always do it that way”) fueling any corporations.

Because of this, many intraprenarial initiatives are bound to fail. Nokia is again a typical example where many talents across the organization tried and failed to turn a perfectly oiled shipping company (get hardware components, flash the OS and software, sandwich it between 2 plastic covers, put it in a box, put an extra size user guide into the same box, ship to X) into a service oriented company: habits and structure prevailed over transformation.

Yet, intrapreneurs keep popping-up here and there, time to time succeeding in transforming a corporation up to the point is it (temporary at least) saved.

To succeed, intrapreneur does need a secret and massive weapon: the power to disturb. The word disturb is here used on purpose, rather than disrupt. Here is why:

Disturb Vs. Disrupt

The distinction can be summarized as follow: disruptive agents act across a segment (Uber for transportation, Airbnb for accommodation) as external agents. Their successes usually come from their abilities to pour additional resources into an existing business segment (private drivers onto the transport business in case of Uber) and in their capacities to manage and to monetize these resources. As a reaction, the business segment will adapt (by means of technology, offering or through legal methods), until a new equilibrium is reached and a new wave of disruption arrives. Think about advertising: Google search came and disrupted the advertising industry, until SEO advertisement became integrated onto the generic advertisement business. Then came socially targeted advertisement (Facebook and Co), changing the game until being part of it.

Intrapreneurs, as disturbant agents, act differently.

Most noticeably, they are within an established organization, as it is not an external agent. As a result the impact is not as wide as for disrupting agents. It is however much deeper as the approach is different.

For a disturbant agent or intrapreneurs, the purpose is not to pour additional resources or not even to challenge a status quo, but to shake and rebuild a structure from within. This is a violent process against which the impacted corporation cannot simply adapt to, neither can it absorb it. It is a complete DNA swap, hence the high rate of failure. Company such as IBM (from server to service), Nokia (from paper pulp to robber boots to mobile phone) have been lead and managed by intrapreneurs who modified the entire business model as well as the corporate culture (or habits) to a point these corporations became anew.

While most outstanding cases of disturbance are visible when the intrapreneur is on the top, one cannot ignore that intrapreneurs act at all levels of an organization.

Even if this is still being barely noticed, there are vivid examples of disturbance ongoing in mainstream/old fashion industry. The most common example is when an intrapreneur shakes a corporation by shifting its culture, business model and habit through forcing it to focus on customer rather than on product. Flagship examples are Kone (runs by a Former Nokia executive) and Konecranes, 2 pure industry players delivering heavy hardware. They turned their focus on providing services around their customer’s hardware needs rather than the hardware itself, profoundly altering their business approach, culture and employee’s competence pool. While the move seems a natural step from the outside, it is not necessarily perceived as such from the inside, as habits and organization have been set to support the “traditional” approach. It is even more challenging when such structure is doing (reasonably) good.

Today, the pace of disrupting agents popping up (and succeeding) is growing exponentially as corporations are getting pressure to transform their business model (the pressure coming from the business environment itself or from top down enforcement) and because technology (namely data driven management) provides the needed internal visibility (and support) for such actions. As such Intrapreneurs are fast becoming pivotal elements of corporation mutation and much sought after employee by corporation aspiring transformation.

How to breed an intrapreneur?

As culture and habit are deep rooted into corporations, breeding an intraprenarial spirit from within is a tedious challenge. Course and lecture can be organized, allowing promising elements to “see the world from the outside” and “to think out of the box”, but as long as the internal structure will not adopt a trial and fail attitude (not to mention to being open to changes), the probability of successfully breeding, nurturing and keeping a pool of intrapreneur is slim.

As a fact, the best intrapreneurs are usually external elements brought in. Why? For a few reasons:

- Because they have yet to absord by the new corporate culture. Their freshness and “right” to ask beginner’s questions are their best assets for challenging status quo.

- Because they have most likely dealt with corporate culture pressure in the past and understand how to deal/play with it to their advantages

- Because they are not afraid to tackle new challenges and won’t be in panic mode when uncertainty knocks at the door (by starting a new job, they are already outside their comfort zone)

- Because the simple fact they are starting a new job means they are ready to make a bigger change

The key challenge for a corporation when onboarding such profile is to make sure that the structure is ready and mature for a change. If not, mutual frustration is the most likely outcome.

As for the intrapreneur, coming up with new, disturbing business model and the sole hope it will happen just because he is hired, is a sure path for failure. Radical ideas will face resistance for the simple facts that:

-While everyone welcome changes, none wants to change (“Everyone is part of the solution, never a part of the problem”)

-Bringing new concepts that are not aimed at addressing an acute need or bringing tangible benefit to the current business are bound to fail

-Because changes induce an amount of uncertainty few are willing and ready to deal with

-Because change, on the long run, will force each and every individual to question their roles and to re-invent it

-Because not everyone is adaptable to change and difficult situation will arise

Which implies that intrapreneur, aside their will and vision must be equipped with a superior human relation and communication skills. Just like great entrepreneurs…