The Business Intrapreneur: Profiles of Unsung Heroes of Corporate America. Kristin Boone's Eilenberg

      However, I believe that being an entrepreneur is very different from being an intrapreneur. I will agree that there are some overlaps when it comes to skills and abilities, but I believe that the motivations are uniquely different. I know that this is a gross generalization, but an entrepreneur is focused on her own success or the commercial success of a particular product or idea. In contrast, an intrapreneur is focused on the success of an organization. An entrepreneur may build an organization to support their interests and aspirations, but an intrapreneur is inside the organization facilitating its survival and championing its evolution. Intrapreneurs are 100% committed to their employer. There are times when an entrepreneur works for a company, but in these instances, they are still looking for or pursuing the next ‘big thing’ for themselves and have one foot out the door.

      Intrapreneurs are the people inside a large organization that believe in the organization whole-heartedly. They are true soldiers for the company’s mission and are willing to fall on their own sword time and time again if it’s for the ‘right’ reason. In many cases, intrapreneurs are aware of the political upsides and downsides to taking stands and fighting for their beliefs. Intrapreneurs are organizational misfits. They typically don’t quite fit the corporate definition of the ideal employee. They do the work that the organization has stated is important for its immediate survival, but prefer to focus on doing the work that they, themselves, believe is important for the organization’s long-term survival. This different mindset creates tension in the corporate world. Therefore, it takes a special kind of leader to recognize the value of intrapreneurs and how to motivate them.

      Intrapreneurs are identified as “bulls in China shops” or “boat rockers”, but because they have established a track record of delivering and following through with the things that they champion and they have a trusted network that spans across company levels and geographies, the company puts up with them… to a certain extent. There are instances where intrapreneurs are recognized for their value and contributions, but typically corporations do not make it easy for intrapreneurs to operate at their full potential.

      Leadership would constantly tell me that the organization needed more ‘Kristins’. This always made me laugh because I knew the challenges that I experienced each day as an intrapreneur. And, even though I had a few experiences working with others that were just like me, those moments were serendipitous. I wondered if there was a better way to find the other intrapreneurs inside my company and across our industry. How do I find them? What do we have in common? What great things are they doing? How could we partner and make bigger things happen? How do they continue to keep up the good fight? Or, are they burnt out, hiding, and no longer doing the work that inspired them?

      Framing

      This book has been written for two types of audiences.

      The first is employees that are searching for answers about who they are, why they seem to be so different, and maybe, just maybe, are looking to find other people just like them. My bet is that the search for published information to help with their own self discovery process was triggered by some kind of discussion or intervention that happened with their direct supervision where they were told that they were ‘rocking the boat’, ‘rattling the cages’, ‘ruffling feathers’ too much and that they had to tone it down and start to tow the line, or else. The person probably feels like the organization ‘just doesn’t get me’ or the signals that the organization is sending don’t jive with their internal compass. They feel like a misfit. I want these people, who very likely may be intrapreneurs, to realize that they are not alone and there are others, just like them out there.

      Separately, the tough truth is that there’s probably some level of legitimacy in the feedback that is being given. The challenge is to filter the feedback in a way that is meaningful and that will lead to answering some questions:

      Am I a misfit in this organization? (let’s just assume that the response = yes.)

      Does it matter to me that I am a misfit in this organization?

      Am I a misfit because of the organization or who I report to?

      Are there other parts of the organization where I would be seen as less of a misfit?

      Are there other organizations that may better suit me and my misfittedness?

      Do I have any interest in making my own company based on my ideas and concepts?

      I realize that these are tough questions to answer and the answers may change over time, but these things need to be considered and addressed. I also want to recognize that your answers and level of misfittedness do not qualify you as an intrapreneur. Instead, I think that your misfittedness is more like a symptom that needs to be better diagnosed and understood. You may be a misfit for your profession, job, company, or industry. Sometimes the misfit classification is legit, others it is just based on a bad situation with a direct supervisor. Make sure that you know the difference. Being a misfit in one company’s culture does not equal being a misfit in another company’s culture. This type of assessment has to happen separately and/or in parallel to the evaluation of being an intrapreneur.

      Second, my hope is that this book will help leaders better identify and take advantage of the unique skills an intrapreneur can bring to an organization; skills that will not only help the organization survive, but also drive for bottom line growth. I am a huge champion for intrapreneurs and believe that they are significant contributors to an organization. Intrapreneurs may not be the easiest direct reports to have or manage, but they are the ones that selflessly make things move within an organization. If leadership can figure out how to mobilize intrapreneurs from within their organization and culture, there will be a recognizable impact from increasing revenue to reducing costs and expenses. Each organization will need to identify their own relevant proxy measurements to determine if they are establishing a framework that allows the intrapreneurs to harness and fulfill their potential.

      Process and methodology for data collection

      I will admit upfront that my process for identifying my intrapreneur sample was not totally scientific. I knew that intrapreneurs are a very small subset of the entire work force. So, to expedite the discovery process of intrapreneurs, I compared my personal definition of “intrapreneur” against my existing network of friends and colleagues. Then, I reached out to the ones that I thought met many of the aspects of my intrapreneur definition and sent out formal interview requests. To make sure that my sample wasn’t too insular, I also sought assistance of entrepreneurial friends for names and contact information for the people that they thought fit my definition. I have included the email that I used for this process in the back of the book. Simply put, I created the intrapreneur sample based on my immediate and extended network.

      I produced a list of questions that I believed would surface unique findings that would either confirm or negate the definitions that I was using to describe intrapreneurs. I used a Microsoft Word template to help me keep to the script with each of my interviews. The template helped gather specific bits and pieces of information from one interview to the next, but I did allow for free flow of the conversation with each person.

      Here’s the script of questions that I tried to use during each of the interviews:

      What’s your story? What’s your education? Where have you worked? What have been your titles and general responsibilities, both on paper and the things that you have just done?

      How do you define ‘intrapreneur’? Do you consider yourself a moderate or strong intrapreneur? Why?

      How do you get work done within your organization? What are your intrapreneur-specific skills, capabilities, or attributes? What is an example about how you applied these skills, capabilities, and attributes to get work done within your organization?

      What resources (money, people, technology, etc) do you have at your disposal to be able to do the work that you do? How do you access these resources? Do you have direct control over these resources?

      What