One of the reasons companies invest in intrapreneurship and the practice is important for their career is the concrete results produced from this culture. There are examples in several organizations, so we will cite a few for you to be inspired by. Look.
Sony
The PlayStation, one of Sony’s flagships, was the result of the initiative of an engineer, Ken Kutaragi. At the time, in the 1990s, the company was focused on selling Walkman and other stereos, and it wasn’t part of the plans to compete with Nintendo for the gaming market.
In fact, the organizations were working together on a project targeting the American market. As the Mega Drive was dominant, the owner of Mario Bros. was looking for improvements to increase its share, requesting an audio chip from Sony.
It turns out that the contract between the companies was cancelled. From then on, the engineer in charge presented the idea of developing his own video game and sold it to the directors, obtaining the necessary sponsorship to carry out the activities. Today, with each new generation, this video game sells over 60 million copies.
Google’s organizational culture is focused on creativity, innovation and user satisfaction, and is often seen in informal workplaces, leisure space during working hours and freedom for employees.
One of the multinational’s practices is 80/20, in which professionals can dedicate 20% of their time to developing internal projects of interest. It was during this period that an employee identified a need — email boxes full of promotions and spam — and developed the solution, which was keyword categorization.
The most interesting thing is that the technology was already there. Although it is the most used search engine on the internet, it took an internal entrepreneur to think about associating the tool with a user demand and, thus, establishing one of Gmail’s main differentials.
DreamWorks
Like Google, DreamWorks has its practices aimed at stimulating innovation. One of them is to allow employees in the creative area to make small presentations to executives with ideas for new animations. In addition, anyone, regardless of rank, can submit creative suggestions through the organization’s ideas program.
Another characteristic is the investment in qualification aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship and creativity. The company offers courses to encourage artistic work, which not only motivates innovation but also values creativity as part of the organizational culture.
Realize, with the examples of Sony, DreamWorks and Google, that the initiative of the collaborators can be valued in different ways in an organization and, in many cases, will be decisive for highly profitable projects.
How to put intrapreneurship into practice?
Every manager, leader or employee needs to be aware of the actions that favor the application of this concept in companies. If you identify with any of these positions and don’t know where to start, keep an eye on the tips we’ve listed.
Identify entrepreneurial profiles
The first step is to find out which employees are more creative and willing to transform their work routine. The objective is not to gather only these individuals, but to distribute them among the different teams or sectors that may exist in the organization.
In this way, every group focused on presenting a new project, for example, will have the help of an entrepreneur. In this situation, the company is more likely to achieve its goals and celebrate results.
Set aside time for brainstorming
No matter how creative the collaborators are, they will hardly be able to propose good solutions while performing other tasks. In this sense, it is worth setting aside a few minutes of work time for these professionals to put intrapreneurship into practice.
This exclusive dedication to launching ideas can occur one or more times a week, according to need. A good strategy to encourage teams is to challenge them with projects that require corrections or changes.
Use tools to register news
It’s not worth taking the risk of losing projects due to forgetfulness. Therefore, another important tactic is to encourage the sharing of ideas that arise. Posters, post-it boards, and document exchange apps are great resources.
Sometimes, a sketch registered by a particular contributor may receive complements from other professionals. Over time, the addition and cross-referencing of new information will allow projects to be polished and off the ground.
Value the opinion of all members
Each employee involved with the process of creating or improving a business can have something to add. This means that every member of the team deserves to be heard, regardless of their professional profile or working method.
The more collaboration there is between people who propose to discuss ideas, the more chances the group will have to take advantage of good opportunities. In any case, the presence of a mediator can be useful to ensure that dissenting opinions have the same weight and are exposed without problems.
Celebrate the achievement of goals
Every achievement deserves to be celebrated, from the simplest to the one that seemed impossible. Ideally, this should be done in stages, as the team hits goals and progresses along the path toward completing projects.
That way, it’s easier to keep motivation up there and ensure that everyone gives their best on each task. Another practice that helps is to highlight the proposals that had the most satisfactory results, stimulating internal competitiveness in a healthy way.
With the potential to improve several jobs, intrapreneurship will play an important role in your professional career. Today, with more and more companies looking for people with this characteristic, it is essential to develop the profile and know how to add value in terms of innovation to the business.
