Intrapreneuring Innovation thoughts

INTRAPRENEURING, a word not used very commonly, is worth knowing about.  Gifford Pinchot III, scion of the founder of the U.S. Forest Service and running mate of Teddy Roosevelt on the Progressive Party ticket a hundred years ago, wrote a book that got briefly into the public lexicon about the time that ENTREPRENEURING became known.  The difference is that Intrapreneurs wend their craft inside larger corporations, on behalf of others, rather than starting their own company.

Pinchot ascribed many traits to these folk, and provided a list of characteristics so you could tell if you were one.  You probably know the famous saying, "Ask forgiveness, not permission."   Another was "come to work every day willing to be fired."  The clear implication was that intrapreneurs have to fight the system -- indeed have to fight their own company and management -- to be allowed to contribute to that company's success.

Many pundits, including Michael Schrage at MIT, observe that Intrapreneurs cannot exist today because corporate leaders are no longer tolerant of their spasmodic, episodic inventive approach -- they seek efficiency and productivity from their design teams rather than innovation.  And that, some would say, is indeed a function of the Harvard Business School teaching which has by now permeated the entire MBA school approach in America.

I think it is more fundamental than that.  One problem is that MBA candidates seldom are practicing engineers; they tend to be either recent graduates with little practical experience, or folk with financial training rather than scientific or engineering training.  This is a critical difference in two respects -- first, the constant experimentation / validation nature of scientific inquiry with lots of trial and error, and a whole lot of compromise, eludes such folk.  Secondly, the notion that failed experimentation is positive, i.e. that risk taking and learning from the duds is valuable and necessary, feels just somehow wrong.

The net result is that we have a nation of MBA leaders who are avowedly risk-averse, rather than a nation of designers who are not innovative.

Another problem -- maybe the core problem -- is that innovation is upsetting.  It IS risky.  And the next quarterly earnings statement will be due shortly, where 'voters' -- i.e. shareholders -- ask, "What have you done for me lately?"

This blog -- by a historic Intrapreneur -- proposes to discuss, describe, and debate Intrapreneuring, and its potentially significant role in business today.  My credentials are 'historic' -- featured as Chapter 1 of Pinchot's book nearly thirty years ago, interviewed by Jane Pauley on The Today Show which has been rebroadcast in seventy-five countries to my knowledge  -- through a recent memoir "Permission Denied: Odyssey of an Intrapreneur", available through InnovaScapes Institute Press.

So, maybe a new word for you -- INTRAPRENEURING.   More about this, and more about what InnovaScapes Institute might do to help it become more known, and hopefully more prevalent, to come