Entrepreneurs vs. Intrapreneurs, what is the difference

Entrepreneur v/s intrapreneur 

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What is an intrapreneurship?

Boardroom meetings become tense and the finger-pointing begins when a company’s growth slows.

Executives scream, “An alternative approach is required! Better candidates need to be hired! We must change our culture! Our payment is incorrect!”

If the founder of the company is present, he laments we have more qualified people, more resources, and better opportunities than before. He explains that we have considered ourselves too big to be unwilling to learn something new and change.

A member of staff who is familiar with modern ideas and situations introduces a new business term and phrase, “intrapreneur,

An intrapreneur is what we need in this situation.

According to the cool executive, intrapreneurs are “Inside Entrepreneurs” who will emulate their founder. The intrapreneur, he or she claims, is willing to “do the right thing to serve the client” and will defy corporate stagnation by risking professional advancement.

What do they notice as everyone scans the room for this growth-saving figure?

Executives’ gazes shift in three different directions around the table:

1. Most managers’ eyes look down, hoping this fresh notion dies before having them adapt or take chances.
2. The owner remembers the “good old days” when he or she managed a much smaller and more narrowly focused business while gazing upward and out the window. Everyone back then had “fire in their guts” and was an intrapreneur.
3. Younger, brighter eyes twinkle in one or two sets, conveying hope that the time ends political restrictions and stifling company politics and seize the chances they perceive but cannot take advantage of. These people grasp the opportunity and volunteer to be “champions” of the new company effort in an optimistic, but disastrous, way.

What transpires? Management picks an intrapreneur, hoping this “champion” succeeds. Will this person lead the business if successful? Will he or she quit and start a business? The aspiring intrapreneur is all too “beaten” into submission and “forced” to rejoin the original group.

Why don’t more intrapreneurs succeed, despite their righteousness?

Because by standing up for what is right, intrapreneurs force their colleagues to face the reality of who they and their businesses have become. The situation is not very appealing when a staid company tries to act like a growth business, much like a middle-aged weekend warrior exercising after years of complacency.

I have assisted or guided several intrapreneurs in creating products, markets, distribution channels, and applications throughout my time in Corporate America and as a consultant today. Here are some examples of what works and what doesn’t when business owners try to foster intrapreneurs within their organizations.

Intrapreneurs are successful when you, the business owner...

• Act as you speak: Give your all to people who can stand up to the rest of your staff with passion, assurance, and conviction. Ignore any other peculiarities they may have and protect them from criticism from their peers if you think they have the right thing.
• Choose those who have greater breadth than depth. The intrapreneur must comprehend and integrate many dissimilar elements of a business, market, and project to be a successful change agent. Others can complete the details afterward.
• Select industry leaders with knowledge of the market, distribution, products, and technology. If you want to build your business, you don’t need yet more politicians or office workers. To succeed, both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs must understand their markets.
• Pick “doers” who are well known. Prioritize rewarding passionate, active workers over loyal, submissive ones. Your organization is aware of which employees are productive. Fit is less important than effectiveness.
• Avoid leading your decent folks to the slaughter. Separate decent people with excellent ideas from efforts that come at the wrong time or with inadequate resources. Don’t flush your infants down the toilet with dirty water.
• Do not request that your internal entrepreneur fix your entire company, marketing, or sales strategy. That’s what you do. Audit and refocus your company’s best and highest usage around the target market it serves, and the customer needs it meets with the help of your executive committee and other specialists.

When you, as the owner, tolerate it, insiders fail.

• Lip service to leadership. Your intrapreneurship attempts will fail if you are hesitant to contribute your time, money, or reputation. A leader who says one thing but does another is worse than a wet blanket.
• Politics that is too strong. Success is unusual when your executives cannot look beyond their areas to integrate their business. The intrapreneur must work well with other departments. They are not miracle workers, even though they must use their power to subdue opposing agendas.
• An unproductive culture. Rarely can one person change a corporate culture that isn’t healthy? Systems, Structure, Staff, and Salary are the four “S’s” that must be changed to change the culture. You must drive this yourself if your business needs major surgery. An intrapreneur can not lead a coup d’état; they can only manage an initiative.

What Do You Do When You’re an Intrapreneur?

If you, the intrapreneur, are presented with a chance to change your company, think about this. By influencing the direction of your company’s future, you can have the chance to advance your career to new heights. Will you leave your mark or accept your fate if you are asked to produce a product, service, channel, or application? Should you take advantage of the situation, reject the chance, or quit to start your own business?

Seize the moment when:

• Unlike you, your corporate and paid employees do not feel empowered to carry out the changes.
• With the success of your business or a raise in reward, your hourly employees do not make the same connections that you do.
• Nobody in your firm, not even your sales team, has ever needed to sell an idea, a good, or a service to pay the mortgage.
• You see your company trying to fit in, but you can’t.
• When you see, your owners are more driven by the need to safeguard their riches than they are by the want to create new value, reject the opportunity (and start your own business).
• Your owners are insecure, helpless, and unwilling to change.
• Insiders who want to keep things the same drive your company.
• The agony of your company changing is worse than the pain of your company staying the same.

Entrepreneurs vs. Intrapreneurs

Let’s face it: When under pressure to expand, organizations of all stripes often turn to their foundations and past triumphs for guidance. The hardest obstacle for a maturing corporation is reviving internal business growth. Can it thrive despite its developed culture and recapture its entrepreneurial spirit? The business is relying on intrapreneurs to achieve the best of both worlds. If owners take the recommendations above, it might work.

By definition, intrapreneurs show the same traits as entrepreneurs, including conviction, passion, and drive. They compel the company to consider its effectiveness to a greater extent as the intrapreneur asserts himself. The intrapreneur is succeed if the organization is helpful. When the company is unsuccessful, the intrapreneur fails or departs to find a new business.

In conclusion, every productive employee possesses intrapreneurial qualities that may or may not lead to an entrepreneurial existence. How close are you to starting your own business? Your response will help you in deciding whether to stay or leave.