Intrapreneurship: The new face of Entrepreneurship
A lot of people are not familiar with the term “intrapreneurship” unlike the very popular “entrepreneurship.”
Contrary to an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur is an entrepreneur working in a large organisation and developing innovative solutions for the organisation. Intrapreneurs share the same qualities as entrepreneurs. The major difference is that intrapreneurs develop ideas for their employers to improve the business.
Having worked in the banking sector, I have been opportuned to see banking products get positively transformed by staff of the bank. Intrapreneurship creates a framework for an entrepreneurial mindset and infrastructure needed to support the growth of an organization.
Also working on my start-up, I realize intrapreneurship has to be a part of the business plan for the following reasons:
Intrapreneurship provides an avenue for Sustained Innovation especially in a developing country like Nigeria with a lot of tech startups that do not receive funding for the production of such goods which have the potentials to improve the economic growth of the country, reduce unemployment and by implication, poverty.
Apart from retaining employees given the fact that employees leave jobs that no longer challenge them, Intrapreneurship helps to discover skills otherwise hidden in employees.
From inspiring other employees to take on more challenging and innovative tasks of improving the organization to complementing traditional business practices by seeking diverse sources of business expansion within an organization, intrapreneurs play a pivotal role in the life cycle of their orgnisation’s business.
Intrapreneurship improves the growth of a business which enables the organization to have a positive public image.
Companies that encourage intrapreneurship have an edge over other companies in the same industry in terms of output and quality of employees as their employees are motivated to work harder and think outside the box.
