This post contains some information about the influence of cultures on you being a succesful intrapeneur. You have to be aware of the cultures you are living and working in. You have to understand them, and then try to adapt to them in such a way you c…

Intrapreneurship or Internal Entrepreneurship is fast becoming a big buzz word as companies start to embrace design, innovation and creativity as a strategic competitive advantage. Using the viewpoint that “innovation begins with everybody”…

I was actually planning to write an article on “how” to do it, as an extension to this artical’s “why” we should do it. Please stay tuned.

We can have a “street-smarts” fund and a “scholar” fund ( ala Donald Trump ) and allow citizens to bet on it. We’ll let the market dictate the interest rate and investors will bear the risks of default.

Between a streetwise ITE or poly grad and a scholar starting a business, I’m happy to bet my money on the former because I think he’s more likely to eat humble pie and humiliate himself for more business.

I think this will answer the ultimate question : Are academic book smarts useful in the real world of business ?

Regards

Intrapreneurship in the civil service is very far fetched. Privatization is likely to occur first and I think more civil servants should ask themselves tough questions about this phenomenon. ( Unlike many readers here, I actually support privatization of as many government services as possible but service levels must be defined very clearly for companies to run their operations. )

It’s noble but unrealistic to expect the civil service to take the first step introducing any changes, look how long it took for them to have a 5 day week ?

Then only other scenario I can think of is the Steven Ting episode where he bought the operations of a company which was withdrawing from the local market and built an enterprise of his own. That sounds more like pure entrepreneurship to me, though…

Regards

Thank you for your thoughts.
The profit maximization and cost-cutting approaches are more utilized in companies that outsource their manufacturing or specialized services to different parts of the world. If Singapore wants to move into knowledge based economy, this old school approach needs to change. I totally agree with you that very few companies can do that, but we need that very few companies to do it first.

The unfortunate reality is that the SG government is the biggest employer and they should start first. Of course, the fear is that the middle management will completely screw it up, which I totally agree, after my experience with working with people from government agencies that claim to help entrepreneurship but instead making things worse.

Entrepreneurship is not only about making money. For example, social enterprise can be used to promote a particular cause.

Let me use an example from the UK Medical Research Council. Originally this department called Gene Services is a government body that help to do sequencing for public environmental agencies. Then they open their services to private sector and eventually made a lot of money. So, the UK government suggested, “Why don’t you guys turn it into a company?” Perfectly legit situation for intrapreneurship within the government.

The last thing you want the civil service to do is them thinking that they can be entrepreneurs. What will happen ? each department will start to think that if they start to show profits, they’ll look good. They’ll start to charge for this, for that. They’ll increase fees at will, etc. You can imagine the consequences. And the worst thing of it all is that these guys will want their share from the upside of the action, but none of the downsides (i.e. if the idea crashes, they’ll still keep their jobs..).

Let’s be clear. Entrepreneurship is about making $$. In order to make $$, you have to be creative, hardworking, think-out-of-the-box, innovative, etc, but the final outcome is to make $$. That’s how entrepreneurs are judged, whether directly or indirectly, whether intentionally or not.

Your article has good intentions. The civil service should be creative, hardworking, innovative, etc, but please keep the entrepreneur stuff out. It’s just like saying criminals are creative, we want the civil service to be creative, hence they should consider being a *good* criminal.

Sounds good on paper, but probably wouldn’t work (or hard to implement). It is very hard (perhaps impossible) to change the incentive structures within the civil service. The quality of the middle management is also suspect. All in all, quite a tall order.

And the true point when you’re declared an intrapreneur/entrepreneur is when you prove them wrong and actually get something up and running(regardless of whether its a new company or simply a new improvement within one).

What’s different between intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship is probably what BL brought up - the access to funds…

And yes, we have to stop looking at failure to implement new ideas within a company as an incompetency

In any case, we can only judge him by his blogging skills, so I wouldn’t know how talented a lawyer he is. :)

Regarding your article, I would like to say “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”. So only those who won’t get hammered down can make it work i.e. the big boss or his pets.

Most will probably agree that company do not like maverick especially if company is made up of employee who simply treat their work as a job. Most will preserve status quo, want to take less risk. So what the cause of these ?? The answer is culture within organization that is intolerant of mistake and failure.

So what can a company do to promote intrapreneurship. Again, I believe the top-down approach is the best. It all start from upper management and hand-on engagement, though it is not easy. After “working with” many companies, I find that management prefer to talk the talk but do little to walk the talk. It only after sometimes, I realize it is because they do not want to should responsibility for the failure of the projects, and thus rather become ignorance of any “implementation problem”.

I do observe too that companies with too many structure and levels has poor chance of innovation because ppl will not be appreciated by the top (the top does not know what happening below them).

But look at the game theory from the MNC’s point of view. It is more efficient to simply gather the life energy of my employees to cut costs or raise revenues for the company, why encourage intrepreneurship that is likely to change the balance of power in the organization ? Worse there is always the possibly of a spinoff becoming a deadly competitor in the future. Managers are also very unwilling in the real world to cede power to creative employees.

Another way would be to view the game theory from the employee’s point of view, the whole point about becoming an entrepreneur from being a corporate grunt is freedom. If I’m this brilliant and have such fantastic ideas, why not just incorporate on my own ?

I’m sure there are plenty of good case studies to support intrepreneurship but they should be rare in Singapore. We’re practice very old school management techniques and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

My HR staff can’t even spell sabbatical on the white board.

We don’t become employees because we are brilliant. Many of us become employees because we know that we’ll be slaughtered in the business world.

Regards