Questioning the role of the intrapreneur

Author: Stuart

In past decades, corporate entrepreneurship (innovation) has been considered vital for the economy of the major worldwide countries to continue to generate their current levels of gdp per capita. However in recent times the number of SME’s not only starting up in business but growing and making higher profits is increasing causing problems for the corporate organisations.

The government in the UK are continuing to back the start up of SME’s showing that the small businesses are successful In creating jobs in the UK. The success of these companies has shown corporate organisations that they are not flexible enough to compete with SME’s who can adapt and change their full operation system much sooner than larger rivals.

The way in which corporate organisations can solve this problem is via intrapreneurs.

Burns states that, "The term intrapreneurship is now generally used to describe the individual charged with pushing through innovations within a larger organisation in an entrepreneurial fashion. They are entrepreneurs in larger organisations."
(Burns, 2005:134)

In other words there are entrepreneurs which work on behalf of a larger firm, taking the control of ensuring that SME's do not gain advantage over the corporate firm.

There are many problems when considering the factors involved in this process. In corporate business the intrapreneur is not the individual who created the idea as described by Burns:

"Rarely the inventor of the product, they work with teams to cut through the bureaucracy of the organisation to develop it for the market place as quickly as possible"
(Burns, 2005, pg 134)

Therefore there is a contradiction by Burns as he states that firstly, an intrepreneur is an entrepreneur but in a larger organisation. However secondly he arrives at the conclusion that the intrapreneur is not the individual who created the innovative idea but who in fact is given the task of ensuring that the product reaches the market place as quickly as possible.

Considering these observations is it correct to say that the reason is due to the uncertainty of the role of the intrapreneur in larger corporate environments as opposed to the innovative and successful role of the entrepreneur within an SME.

Remembering that SME's are continuing to grow in size and stature would it not make sense for the corporate business to hire entrepreneurs and give them full control of their innovation and product development like an SME does??

As opposed to crediting one individual for creating an idea, before passing that idea on to an intepreneur to help it reach the market place, surely it would be simpler to allow one indivdual to take charge of the whole process?

Is this an example of a corporate organisation making processes much more complex than they really ought to be?

References:

Burns, P. (2005) Corporate Entrepreneurship: Building the Entrepreneurial Organisation. Palgrave Macmillan