Intrapreneurship is the way

If you look at any dictionary maybe you will not find this word and its definition. We only know the entrepreneurship which by definition it means "The people who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship has been described as the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit"

Turn the challenges into opportunities

Being agile means communication, self-managed, continuous improvement, early value, effectiveness and many other things. It also means a lot of initiatives, as employees learn to work in a self-organization manner and deal with any challenge they face, either as individuals or as a team. Every single challenge or impediment that slows down their work requires an action, an initiative that will permanently address the issue. All these initiatives are new ideas, new ways of working coming out from their day to day work and collaboration with the rest of the team.

An employee idea can change the whole market

Cultivating such an environment is a pure benefit for the organization as you don't just have employees but you have leaders. These leaders drive the organization forward and get things done without waiting anyone to ask them to do so. Employee satisfaction is not only based on the salary but is based on the freedom to act, to contribute, to evolve, learn, mentor and being mentored, train and professionally develop. Every single idea coming out from your employees can easily change the market, as long as the management empowers them to do so.

Maximize the value via intrapreneurship

The question here is how do we make sure that this way of working will maximize even more the value of the organization. Having the right mindset in the organization you can establish a process that will empower employees to create their own internal startups via the right innovation model. This is my definition of intrapreneurship. How do you achieve that? Make sure you have managers with entrepreneurial skills and mindset that will empower and support your employees.

Out of my experience, not only as an Agile coach but also as an innovation lead, I have seen this working very well and many bottom up ideas gave birth to new products that allowed the organization to explore new horizons and enter new markets.

Konstantinos Kareklas, Agile Coach