Intrapreneurship

What is Intrapreneurship?

Intrapreneurship is the practice of entrepreneurship by employees within an organization.

Difference between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur:

An entrepreneur takes substantial risk in being the owner and operator of a business with expectations of financial profit and other rewards that the business may generate. On the contrary, an intrapreneur is an individual employed by an organization for remuneration, which is based on the financial success of the unit he is responsible for. Intrapreneurs share the same traits as entrepreneurs such as conviction, zeal and insight. As the intrapreneur continues to expresses his ideas vigorously, it will reveal the gap between the philosophy of the organization and the employee. If the organization supports him in pursuing his ideas, he succeeds. If not, he is likely to leave the organization and set up his own business.

Example of intrapreneurship: 

A classic case of intrapreneurs is that of the founders of Adobe, John Warnock and Charles Geschke. They both were employees of Xerox. As employees of Xerox, they were frustrated because their new product ideas were not encouraged. They quit Xerox in the early 1980s to begin their own business. Currently, Adobe has an annual turnover of over $3 billion.

Features of Intrapreneurship: 

Entrepreneurship involves innovation, the ability to take risk and creativity. An entrepreneur will be able to look at things in novel ways. He will have the capacity to take calculated risk and to accept failure as a learning point. An intrapreneur thinks like an entrepreneur looking out for opportunities, which profit the organization. Intrapreneurship is a novel way of making organizations more profitable where imaginative employees entertain entrepreneurial thoughts. It is in the interest of an organization to encourage intrapreneurs. Intrapreneurship is a significant method for companies to reinvent themselves and improve performance. In a recent study, researchers compared the elements related to entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial activity. The study found that among the 32,000 subjects who participated in it, five percent were engaged in the initial stages of a business start-up, either on their own or within an organization. The study also found that human capital such as education and experience is connected more with entrepreneurship than with intrapreneurship. Another observation was that intrapreneurial startups were inclined to concentrate more on business-to-business products while entrepreneurial startups were inclined towards consumer sales. Another important factor that led to the choice between entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship was age. The study found that people who launched their own companies were in their 30s and 40s. People from older and younger age groups were risk averse or felt they have no opportunities, which makes them the ideal candidates if an organization is on the lookout for employees with new ideas that can be pursued.

Entrepreneurship appeals to people who possess natural traits that find start-ups arousing their interest. Intrapreneurs appear to be those who generally would not like to get entangled in start-ups but are tempted to do so for a number of reasons. Managers would do well to take employees who do not appear entrepreneurial but can turn out to be good intrapreneurial choices.

Organisation

What is An Organisation???

When a group of people work together to achieve specific target, the context in which they work is referred to as an Organisation. Organisations can be small, involving only a few people in one location or they can involve thousands of people scattered throughout the world. They can be very simple in structure, or they can be extremely complex. What separates organizations from other activities is that organizations usually operate within a defined structure and have a socialization process that is determined by the people who control them. Organizations can also be defined in terms of the products and services they offer to consumers. For example, corporations such as Ford Motors and the American Ex-press Corporation provide us with both products and services. General Motors builds and sells cars while American Express provides us with credit cards and financial ad-vice. Each is an organization but they are vastly different in what they do. Another way to define an organization is by the particular roles individuals playing them. This type of definition implies that understanding what an organization is depends on knowing how and where individuals fit into the organization.

Definition of Organisation:

An organization is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, which controls its own performance, and which has a boundary separating it from its environment. The word itself is derived from the Greek word Organon meaning tool. It’s a “Social unit of people systematically arranged and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals on a continuing basis.” All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between functions and positions, and subdivides and delegates roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out defined tasks. Organizations are open systems in that they affect and are affected by the environment beyond their boundaries.

An organization is defined by the elements that are part of it, its communication, its autonomy and its rules of action compared to outside events. In sociology "organization" is understood as planned, coordinated and purposeful action of human beings to construct or compile a common tangible or intangible product. Sociology distinguishes the term organization into planned formal and unplanned informal (i.e. spontaneously formed) organizations. By coordinated and planned cooperation of the elements, the organization is able to solve tasks that lie beyond the abilities of the single elements. The price paid by the elements is the limitation of the degrees of freedom of the elements. Advantages of organizations are enhancement, addition and extension. Disadvantages can be inertness and loss of interaction.

Role of organisation:

Most of us don’t realize the importance that organizations play in our lives, but they continually affect us, as you will see. Although there are many people who work alone, most of us work with others. We are usually conceived in the most basic of all organizations — the family. Our birth usually takes place in another organizational environment — the hospital. We are certainly affected throughout our lives by a large organizational structure called “government” that passes laws to keep us organized and collects taxes to pay for services. And, during our lifetimes, a majority of us spend our time studying, working, and playing in organizations. For example, most of our formal learning takes place in an educational organization, such as the University of Kolkata; we may work for organizations like Microsoft, KPMG, Proctor and Gamble Corporation, or the US Bank; and we play in organizations such as the YMCA, the tennis club, or the local softball league. Obviously, it is impossible to list all of the ways in which organizations affect us. It is important, however, for you to realize that organizations play a dominant role in our lives. If we were to ask, what single activity fills most people’s time more than anything else? The answer besides sleep for most is the dreaded four-letter word: WORK.

Organizational context, an idea:

The organizational context refers to the scope of an entity, such as

·         parent organization (organization owning one or more entities)

·         enterprise (an entire organization)

·         division or department (a sub-organization within the overall organization)

·         work unit (a sub-sub-organization)

·         Work role (one person’s job or part of a job).