Intrapreneurship was coined years before it became a “buzzword.” In fact, Gifford Pinchot III came up with the term in 1978 and Steve Jobs popularized it nearly a decade later, defining intrapreneurship as, “a group of people going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company.”
Today, companies all over the world are inspiring internal innovation by urging the same mentality among their employees — even new hires.
Intrapreneurs, by their nature, are curious. They’re always interested in figuring out, is there a better way? Unlike an entrepreneur — who faces personal risk when a product fails to produce revenue — an intrepreneur receives a salary while innovating outside of their direct role.
Sparking an idea revolution in tune with intrapreneurship, Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder released “Ideas Are Free.” It reinforces the notion that simple ideas can save time, money and effort and tells the story of an employee at one of Europe’s largest wireless communication companies who stumbled across an error in billing software that cost approximately $26 million a year in lost revenues. He fixed it with one simple solution.
Unfortunately, many leaders are better at suppressing ideas than promoting them. According to the book, without new ideas a company will inevitably lose out to competitors who are one innovative step ahead. Today, successful companies are paying attention and putting an emphasis on the “employee.”
Here are four examples of how employees innovated to make a difference:
1.) Facebook designer revamps offensive icon. Shortly after being hired Facebook Design Manager Caitlin Winner noticed something that upset her — the smaller female icon sat behind the male icon. After addressing the problem with a fellow designer, she was told, “Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem.” So she did something about it. She redesigned both icons multiple times before the modern/non-sexist iteration was adopted by her peers. Today, she questions all symbolism and strives to incessantly innovate.
2.) Internal hackathon results in Like Button. Facebook is known for a lot of innovative methodologies and constantly pushing its employees to make changes. Originally called the “awesome button,” the Facebook Like button was first prototyped at an internal hackathon. The point being, the button affects all Facebook users on a daily basis and was created thanks to the company’s push for employees to think, experiment and come up with new ideas, no matter how small.
3.) Free creative time for employees leads to innovation. Intuit’s Unstructured Time allows employees to spent 10 percent of their time on any project they’re passionate about. SnapTax, GoPayment and ViewMyPaycheck were all created by employees working on their own ideas during Unstructured Time. And Google offers a 20 percent time policy for personal projects. In fact, Gmail was the brainchild of Paul Bucheit, one of the companies first engineers who utilized Google’s creative time policy. Bucheit started the project in 2001 and launched Gmail in 2004. It became the first email with a successful search feature and offered 1,000 MB of storage for free.
But is there room for innovation at companies outside the tech sector? Yes. Around every corner.
4.) Listen to suggestions from all types of employees. Take the Massachusetts Department of Correction, for example. One guard found a simple way to save thousands of dollars and improve the routine of his coworkers when he suggested taking mugshots with digital cameras and use a database for image storing rather than using film. The MDC saved more than $56,000 among its 16 correctional facilities.
Successful ideas, products and businesses come when leaders let their employees experiment and follow their dreams. And sometimes a company’s greatest innovation starts with a very small idea.