A thesis on intrapreneurs as insider threats

This is an early outline for a thesis that is now submitted and approved. Have a look at the final version!
Feedback is still very welcome in the comments or via email!

The intelligence community needs innovation and innovation involves risk (STAR, 2020¹). Intrapreneurs are employees that use their entrepreneurial spirit for the benefit of their employer to produce impactful innovations (Pinchot & Soltanifar, 2021²). The risks and negative spillover associated with intrapreneurial ventures and how they are perceived are not thoroughly explored in literature on intrapreneurship, although risks and non-productive outcomes have been observed (Elert & Stenkula, 2020³). This thesis uses the intrapreneurial venture Intellipedia, the U.S. intelligence community’s digital information sharing platform – in essence an internal, compartmentalized Wikipedia – to tentatively explore existing literature for perspectives for deeper understanding of how intrapreneurs can be recognized as insider threats, as the intrapreneurs behind Intellipedia were. One of the two intrapreneurs awarded for Intellipedia (CIA, 2009⁴), Sean Dennehy, has publicly recalled how ”We were called traitors, [and were told] we were going to get people killed” (Havenstein, 2008⁵).

This thesis does not study the actual skeptics and critics of Intellipedia or their arguments and positions. Finding such critics and receiving high enough clearance and trust to have them speak candidly about their concerns was deemed beyond the scope of this thesis. Instead, it seeks arguments for recognizing intrapreneurs as insider threats in a broad range of academic literature. In this holistic literary review, a Rogerian approach is exercised insofar that it articulates skeptical and critical perspectives on intrapreneurship not necessarily held by the author, but investigated to better understand positions where intrapreneurs are recognized as insider threats.

This thesis main contributions to academic literature is as an orientation of white spots in science demanding further investigation, of connections between different conceptual frameworks, and of their relevance to the study of insider threats and intrapreneurship. Specifically, the connection between intrapreneurship and constructive and destructive employee deviance is a promising contribution. This thesis also offers perspectives on intrapreneurship and more generally intra-organizational innovation for practitioners, applicable to risk assessments and innovation management. In applying a Rogesian (rather than a Pavlovian) approach to the perspectives on intrapreneurs as insider threats, this thesis offers new insights to the field of intrapreneurship.

Intrapreneurs

Intrapreneurs are employees who use their entrepreneurial spirit for the benefit of their employer, whilst supported by sponsors higher up in their organization (Pinchot & Soltanifar, 2021⁶) also tend to evade their organizations’ control systems and/or resource management to achieve their missions (Pinchot, 1985, p. xi⁷).

The term was introduced by Pinchot (1985⁸), who described them as “dreamers who do. Those who take responsibility for creating an innovation of any kind within an organization.” In the case of Intellipedia, detailed below, Sean Dennehy and Don Burke are identified as intrapreneurs (Arnold & Magia, 2013⁹).

Insider Threats

Insider threats are for this thesis defined as people who, through authorized access to an organization’s resources, have the potential to negatively affect the organization, its purpose and/or its stakeholders, and that risk doing so. 

Several types of intentional insider acts have been identified, such as fraud, theft, terrorism, and espionage (Bell, Rogers & Pearce, 2019¹⁰). However, most harm from insiders is ascribed to unintentional acts: ”honest people making honest mistakes” (Pfleeger, Lawrence Pfleeger & Margulies, 2015¹¹).

Intellipedia

Intellipedia is a digital platform for collaborative, asynchronous information sharing within and between different U.S. intelligence agencies. It uses the same software as Wikipedia, and even had an ”import from Wikipedia”-option in an earlier version (Dennehy, 2008¹²), where analysts could easily transfer information from Wikipedia to Intellipedia, and then add classified information and personal analysis. Intellipedia is separately implemented on different clearance levels to compartmentalize sensitive information (CIA, 2009¹³). 

Whilst the idea for the effort is attributed to the then head of the CIA’s unit for collaboration technologies, Calvin Andrus (Tomlin, 2005¹⁴) and his article in Intelligence Studies, “The Wiki and The Blog” (Andrus, 2005¹⁵), it was CIA’s Sean Dennehy and his colleague Don Burke that are credited for spearheading the initiative (CIA, 2008¹⁶). Tested in 2005 and announced formally in 2006, Intellipedia soon became something of a trophy project for the US Government. Dennehy later recalled how ”I thought I was working for our public relations office [because] I was up in their office so often about Intellipedia” (Dennehy, 2008¹⁷). However, the Intellipedia project was also met by skepticism from members of the USIC (Dixon & McNamara, 2008¹⁸). Sean Dennehy, later publicly recalled: ”We were called traitors, [and were told] we were going to get people killed” (Havenstein, 2008¹⁹).

The purpose of this thesis 

Despite a clear potential for overlap of the two phenomenons of intrapreneurship and insider threats, this study has found no prior research in academic literature on intrapreneurs as insider threats. To better understand this question, the research  posed in this thesis is:

How can existing conceptual frameworks help understand how intrapreneurs are recognized as insider threats?

This thesis does not try to reveal how or when recognizing intrapreneurs as threats might be justified or crucial. Its research question does however, in a Rogerian tradition, seek to enhance understanding between separate fields of research that could help each other. Moreover and in the same tradition, it ultimately also hopes to contribute to shared and mutual understanding and learning among antagonistic practitioners that could do better together. It might help organizations find, keep, understand and perhaps even articulate a balance between exploration and exploitation of available resources and opportunities. 

To answer the research question, the thesis will present a number of findings and conceptual frameworks from research on intrapreneurship and related fields of study, and tentatively apply them as perspectives on a typical case of intrapreneurship in the intelligence services: Intellipedia. In proposing how different findings and conceptual frameworks can assist in understanding how intrapreneurs are recognized as insider threats, their explanatory power will be briefly explored rather than tested. Intellipedia is in this sense used to illustrate rather than to verify or falsify ideas.

In short, this smorgasbord of perspectives might serve:

1. researchers synthesising academic literature: a better understanding of insider threats, intrapreneurs and/or Intellipedia,
2. scholars seeking to problematize the role of the intrapreneur and of intrapreneurship: a more comprehensive review of critical literature, and
3. intrapreneurs in and beyond the intelligence community: perspectives on their lived experiences.

Have you read all this?
Check out the final version of the thesis, and
please leave a comment or drop me a line!
(Cute kitty by Pranav Kumar Jain)

1. STAR, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advanced Research (2020), Rightly Scaled, Carefully Open, Infinitely Agile: Reconfiguring to Win the Innovation Race in the Intelligence Community, accessed December 5, 2020, URL
2. Pinchot, G. & Soltanifar, M. (2021) “Digital Intrapreneurship: The Corporate Solution to a Rapid Digitalisation”. In: Soltanifar M., Hughes M., Göcke L. (eds) Digital Entrepreneurship. Future of Business and Finance. Springer, DOI
3. Elert, N. & Stenkula, M. (2020) ”Intrapreneurship: Productive and Non-Productive”, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, October, DOI
4. CIA (2009) ”Intellipedia Gurus Win 2009 Homeland Security Medal”, promotional text, cia.gov, published October 08, 2009, accessed December 02, 2020, URL
5. Havenstein, H. (2008) ”CIA Explains Intellipedia”, Computerworld, published June 10, 2008, accessed December 10, 2020, URL
6. Pinchot, G. & Soltanifar, M. (2021) “Digital Intrapreneurship: The Corporate Solution to a Rapid Digitalisation”. In: Soltanifar M., Hughes M., Göcke L. (eds) Digital Entrepreneurship. Future of Business and Finance. Springer, DOI
7. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL
8. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL
9. Arnold, E. & Magia, S. (2013) ”Intrapreneurship in government – Making it work”, Deloitte University Press, URL
10. Bell, A. J.C., Rogers, B. M. & Pearce, J. M., (2019), “The insider threat: Behavioral indicators and factors influencing likelihood of intervention” International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, vol. 24, March 2019, Pages 166-176, DOI
11. Pfleeger, C. P., Lawrence Pfleeger, S., Margulies, J., 2015, “Security in Computing”, ed. 5, Pearson Education, Inc., URL
12. Dennehy, S. (2008) ”Keynote Address: Implementing Intellipedia Within a ‘Need to Know’ Culture” (audio recording), USENIX Association, 22nd Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA ’08), URL
13. CIA (2009) ”Intellipedia Gurus Win 2009 Homeland Security Medal”, promotional text, cia.gov, published October 08, 2009, accessed December 02, 2020, URL
14. Tomlin, S.  (2005) ”The expanding electronic universe”, Nature, 438:547, DOI
15. Andrus, D. Calvin (2005), ”The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community”, Studies in Intelligence, Vol 49, No 3, September 2005, URL
16. CIA (2008), ”Intellipedia Marks Second Anniversary”, press release, CIA News and Information, March 20, 2008 (accessed November 17, 2020), URL
17. Dennehy, S. (2008) ”Keynote Address: Implementing Intellipedia Within a ‘Need to Know’ Culture” (audio recording), USENIX Association, 22nd Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA ’08), URL
18. Dixon, N. M. & McNamara, L. A. (2008), ”Our Experience with Intellipedia: An Ethnographic Study at the Defense Intelligence Agency”, DIA Knowledge Laboratory, republished by Dixon on her blog, conversation matters, accessed December 02, 2020, URL
19. Havenstein, H. (2008) ”CIA Explains Intellipedia”, Computerworld, published June 10, 2008, accessed December 10, 2020, URL