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Intrapreneurship

The paradox of intrapreneuring

In academic literature, intrapreneurship is recognized as initiatives driven by employees, whether as responses to “requests and challenges from a firm’s leadership” or as spontaneous bottom-up initiatives1.

In both cases, intrapreneurial enterprises are approved by upper management as they align with the organization’s strategy. Intrapreneurs “use their entrepreneurial spirit for the benefit of their employer”2.

However, intrapreneurial initiatives are also recognized for “working to circumvent or even sabotage the formal systems that supposedly manage innovation” and “routinely bootleg company resources or ‘steal’ company time to work on their own missions”3.

This seemingly paradoxical duality can be explained as a way of upper management to circumvent or “go through the ‘clay layer’ of middle managers who are usually driven so hard to achieve short-term goals in established systems that they have no time for new ideas”4, by explicitly or implicitly sponsoring intrapreneurs and their actions.

To Pinchot, from a corporate management perspective, “Intrapreneuring is a more timely and effective way of conceptualizing the control task, not an abdication of control” since,

As one intrapreneur put it after a ‘midnight requisition’ of a major piece of capital equipment needed by his team, ‘Nothing is as out of control as a large control system.’

Pinchot, Intrapreneuring, 1985, p. 303

Also, in his opening “Memo to the CEO” Pinchot states that “There is a revolution about to happen in your corporation. Let it start with you.”5.

Can intrapreneurs be insider-threats?

So, how can you tell if an intrapreneur aligns with the organization’s strategy? How do you know if she, he or they indeed “use their entrepreneurial spirit for the benefit of their employer”? How can you make sure that they are not in fact insider threats?

If Pinchot’s two prerequisites are to be combined – if an intrapreneur must be someone who “align with the organization’s strategy” AND someone who act “for the benefit their employer” – then their organization must not only have a strategy that is understood and agreed upon, it must also be the most beneficial one.

An extreme, litteral interpretation of the two prerequisites would probably be that intrapreneurs cannot exist in anything but highly rational and successful organizations: Only a rational organization would have a perfectly communicated, unanimously agreed upon and beneficial strategy. And if there is such an organization, it would probably also be highly successful. Would such an organization really need intrapreneurs breaking protocol and circumventing established systems?

The Essence of Decision

One way to analyze an organization’s and its decisions is by viewing it and its actions through different lenses. In “Essence of Decision”, Allison6 challenged the perception of states as “rational actors” whose actions are products of careful consideration of all available options. Noting that any and every action could be explained by an imagined account a careful consideration, Allison suggested two additional ways to explain or understand international behaviour: “Organizational Behavior” and “Governmental Politics”:

“Organizational behaviour” proposes that states’ behaviour is to a large extent the creation of habit when faced with new challenges. In short, they tend to rely on established repertoires and patterns, “settle on the first alternative that is good enough”7, and opt to limit short term (rather than long term) uncertainty.

Organizations, like house thermostats, rely on relatively promt corrective action to eliminate deviations between actual and desired temperatures, rather than accurate prediction of next month’s temperature.

Graham T. Allison, Essence of decision – Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 72

“Governmental Politics” proposes that turf war-dynamics, “palace politics” – influence states and their actions.

The “leaders” who sit on top of organizations are not a monolithic group. Rather, each individual in this group is, in his own right, a player in a central, competitive game.

Graham T. Allison, Essence of decision – Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 144

Also, each participant sharing central power “sits in a seat that confers seperate responsibilities” and they are bound to judge an executive’s preferences “in the light of their own responsibilities” rather than that of their superior’s8. Moreover, even if a leader is more or less supreme, the leader must still persuade other participants (i.e. key stakeholders) to accept and enact supreme decisions as intended. The alternative is that the leader’s politics is misperceived, misinterpreted, misexecuted or even ignored.

Agreement on what must be done about ‘the issue’ does not suffice to guarantee action.

Graham T. Allison, Essence of decision – Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 153

Does “Intrapreneuring” only see one side of organizations?

In reading Pinchot’s Intrapreneuring9, it’s clear that he does not see organizations as 100% rational actors. He recognizes elements of both creations of habit (e.g. “the clay layer” described above10) and turf wars (e.g. recognizing the Not Invented Here-syndrome11 and turf politics12).

To Pinchot, it seems, intrapreneurs and sponsoring them are antidotes to problems of too much organizational habits and politics.

Unfortunately, such a perspective does not quite resolve the question of when intrapreneuring is justified, and when it’s not.

(Photo of Snowball by Christopher Parsons, Flickr)

  1. 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, p. 235
  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, p. 239
  3. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL, p. xi
  4. 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, p. 240
  5. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL, p. xiii
  6. Allison, G. T. (1971) Essence of decision: explaining the Cuban missile crisis. Glenview, URL
  7. Allison, G. T. (1971) Essence of decision: explaining the Cuban missile crisis. Glenview, URL, p. 72)
  8. Allison, G. T. (1971) Essence of decision: explaining the Cuban missile crisis. Glenview, URL, p. 148)
  9. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL
  10. 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, p. 240
  11. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL, p. 203
  12. Pinchot, G. (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060913355, URL, p. 235

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