Toby Thompson
David Grayson
Toby Thompson
Heiko Spitzeck
Toby Thompson
Hello, my name is Toby Thompson. I am here today with David
Grayson, Professor of Corporate Responsibility and Director of the
Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility here at Cranfield and Dr
Heiko Spitzeck, Lecturer at the Doughty Centre too.
Gentlemen, we are talking about intrapreneurship – an interesting take on that – what is an intrapreneur? David, what is an intrapreneur?
Well, first of all an intrapreneur is somebody who is working inside a large organisation to develop entrepreneurial solutions to business problems. We think a social intrapreneur is somebody who is doing that – so working inside a large company, taking direct initiative, but tackling environmental and social challenges profitably.
So the difference between the intrapreneur and the social intrapreneur is the emphasis on environmental and social challenges.
You said profitably there, so what is the motivation? Heiko, what would you say the motivation for this individual would be? Is it external or is it internal?
Well we are currently conducting a number of interviews with social intrapreneurs in order to find out about that because we don’t want to be prescriptive in our definitions. What I currently hear most from them is that they are motivated very much by having a societal impact. So they are motivated to generate social or environmental benefits and their use in their business and their organisation as a means to do that.
So, the basic definition comes from social entrepreneurship; people like Mohammad Yunus who received the Nobel Prize. So in part we are talking about the Yunus inside of organisations and we are looking at organisations like if you take Microcredit, for example, think about the impact of Microcredit if HSBC or any of the big banks take up the topic.
This is something we see right now; I just had interviews with a couple of people who work in micro insurance or micro energy, but inside of big multinational enterprises, designing products which are targeted towards the bottom of the pyramid.
So David, how are you seeing these types of intrapreneurs? How do they manifest? What are they?
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Professor David Grayson and Dr Heiko Spitzeck
David Grayson
Toby Thompson
David Grayson
Toby Thompson
Heiko Spitzeck
© Cranfield University
Well, I think we are already seeing that there are a number of different types; so we are meeting some who have very much emerged, who are empowered, and who are very much embraced by their company and encouraged.
You have got some, by contrast, who are operating below the radar screen. The senior levels of the company don’t really know that they are around and probably would not necessarily be always too happy if they knew of these folks existence.
So they may not have a title then, as intrapreneurs?
Oh no, definitely not. This is something which is – by definition – something which is coming from the bottom up, rather than typically the company saying we want these folk called social intrapreneurs.
You have got some, as I say, who we think are empowered; you have some operating below the radar screen. You have then got some who are just emerging – we don’t really know yet whether they are going to have substantial impact for the company and for society.
You have got some who we are meeting, who are resigned. They have quit their organisation in frustration that they couldn’t make more progress and we have been interviewing some people who have changed jobs, changed companies, because of their frustration with the company’s unwillingness to respond to their ideas.
And we have also met one or two, who if not today then certainly during the course of their careers, were frustrated. They couldn’t bring about the change they wanted in the company and so they said, OK, I am going to give up; I am staying inside the company, but I am going to wait for a change of leadership, for example, I am going to wait for a change of the circumstances in the business environment when circumstances may be more propitious.
And we have also met some people who have said to us, you know what, in my time I have been all of those things; I have been resigned, I have been frustrated, I have just been emerging, I have been operating below the radar screen and I now, in fact, I feel empowered by the company to do more.
But it sounds like, Heiko, they seem to be maverick consultants aren’t they? Isn’t this seed in all of us inside of corporations?
Well, it’s a special breed of people without a doubt. I think what they have, they have this societal consciousness about social and environmental issues surrounding the organisations in which they work. But they have also the business acumen and the communication skills to clearly make a case.
To give you one example which is as well published by Sustainability in
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Professor David Grayson and Dr Heiko Spitzeck
David Grayson
Toby Thompson
David Grayson
© Cranfield University a guide which is Social Entrepreneurship: A Guide to Action or Change
within Organisations which by Suzy Lonie and Nick Hughes who worked for Vodafone. They realised that, for example, in Kenya 20% of the population have access to banking services, while 60% of the population have a mobile phone. So what they invented is a mobile banking solution, which Vodafone was actively promoting in Kenya, which attracted 200,000 customers in the first year of operation and they have now got more than a million. And at the same time they provide people with safe access to the financial system. Microcredit institutions are now using the system to pay out loans and to get the money back in.
What we are seeing in fact, already, is social intrapreneurs working on lots of different topics. So they are working on local sourcing; on projects to do with improving the environmental performance of their companies – on tackling things like child labour in the supply chain and so on.
And we are recognising that there are some social intrapreneurs who are very talented both in terms of really understanding their subject and able to tell stories, to be able to find champions to help them, to find allies to be able to get some sponsors who will help them to finance and test out the projects inside their businesses. And of course some who don’t really have those kinds of skills.
Similarly we are trying to understand what is the mindset and behaviours and skills from the corporate perspective as well. So how do you encourage and empower social intrapreneurs rather than in fact squashing them or accidentally suppressing them by thinking you are giving them support and encouragement, when in fact you are suppressing their enthusiasm and energy because you are co-opting it too much.
So what conditions in the organisation have to be relevant and around for them to happen? You mentioned earlier on obstacles, some barriers. What are you seeing in terms of this not happening? People leaving organisations because they can’t get this off the ground.
Well some of the things that we are being told already by social intrapreneurs that we have already interviewed are that the timescales very often, particularly in a very large global business, the timescales in which you have to demonstrate that this is commercially attractive are much shorter than you need typically for a social intrapreneurship idea to really prove itself and to come to fruition.
Secondly, that whereas you and I might say, gosh, that particular idea is having huge impact and reach and scale – maybe several hundred thousand as you just heard with the Vodafone example, or even more customers and reach – in fact it is not getting to the scale that would
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Professor David Grayson and Dr Heiko Spitzeck
Toby Thompson
Heiko Spitzeck
Toby Thompson
© Cranfield University be of interest to the parent company who are used to dealing in millions or tens of millions.
So there is a question about timescale; there is a question about scale; there is also a question that has come up very frequently, that social intrapreneurs say our challenge is that the company wants to box us either in, saying this is a community affairs project or this is a new business development project; but the company doesn’t always find it easy to cope with something which is quite consciously addressing multiple goals – both environmental and social improvements – as well as new business development.
And often also, of course, if I may just to finish, the other question of course is that the people who are coming up with the ideas maybe typically do not have the line responsibility for new business development, for new product marketing and so on, and therefore the company is saying just a minute, stick to the day job.
So you have organisations that sound almost uncomfortable with these individuals – would you share that picture?
Well, they are kind of unusual people within the organisation and some organisations do find that uncomfortable. From the perspective of our interviews it is basically, like David said, you have the corporate philanthropy box and you have the business development box.
And it is kind of interesting because what we are getting from the interviews is that this creates a dilemma for the social intrapreneur, because he knows that if we concentrate only on the business benefits, we are going to lose all the social network which is necessary in order to make this innovation happen. So speaking, for example, of micro insurances, you need the micro finance institutions, you need NGOs, you need different social partners in order to frame your product according to your clientele and they are interested in the societal benefit – that is why they are in their kind of organisations in which they work.
So if you come there with a business case, it turns your partners off.
At the same time, if you want to sell it in your own organisation as a social intrapreneur, you need to provide a business rationale which then has the long term normally implications and you need to invest at the beginning. It is very difficult to struggle between this business development/corporate philanthropy. So in one case, one person was able to link the two because he was having some seed finance which was packaged as corporate philanthropy to kick off his project.
I can’t see what comes first, to be honest – I can’t see whether it is the ecology inside the organisation and maybe outside which receives it, or whether it is the business acumen of individual consultant – intrapreneur – to do it. I can’t see that.
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Professor David Grayson and Dr Heiko Spitzeck
David Grayson
Toby Thompson
David Grayson
Toby Thompson
Heiko Spitzeck
David Grayson
© Cranfield University
And I don’t think we are seeing anything which says it is the ecology normally, or it is the individual …
It is a bit of both.
And if you can visualise this as a classic business school two by two matrix, Toby, so you have got either high or low capacity of the organisation to be able to empower and enthuse – to take advantage of these social intrapreneurs – and then on the other axis you have got whether the social intrapreneur has got high or low skills in terms of being able to make their intrapreneurial idea fly.
And of course, if you have got the low organisation capacity and the low skills of the social intrapreneur, you are unlikely to get results. But in fact you may find that even in an organisation that at the moment is not particularly other social intrapreneurs, somebody with enough determination and drive and passion may well in fact find that they can come through.
And part of the skill, I think, is for companies to be able to understand how this can in fact benefit the business and to see this as being an integral part of an innovation strategy.
You are seeing clear benefits by the sound of it from your research?
One of the issues we find in overcoming the obstacles of social intrapreneurs, working inside their organisations when the environment is not really fostering their initiatives, is to get a senior sponsor. So this is really something we see in every interview we are doing; that some senior sponsor at board level is really important in order to get the initiative off the ground and give the social intrapreneur the necessary protection and space in order to innovate and in order to convince their colleagues that societal benefit and financial benefit can work in harmony together.
We can see a number of key benefits from a business perspective and it goes really under the acronym of STIR – we want companies to be stirred up for this; so STIR is about Sustainability . This is tackling many vital issues now that will affect the whole business model of companies around the world if they are not addressing many of the questions of climate change and resource depletion and questions of things like water shortages and so on. So that is the S.
The T is about Talent ; about how you get much savvier in an era of ageing populations in North America and Europe, how you get much savvier about attracting and developing and making the most of the talent that you have got.
Then it is about Innovation ; this is another way of creating a climate
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Toby Thompson
Professor David Grayson and Dr Heiko Spitzeck that encourages innovation in the organisation.
And lastly, I think the R of STIR is about Reputation . Businesses are increasingly being held to higher accountability standards and a critical part of that is demonstrating that you are taking decisive action on many of these economic and environment and social challenges that we all face.
So combined, the sustainability, the talent, the innovation and the reputation arguments make a very compelling logic for this.
It sounds like you are stirring the organisations up around intrapreneurs; gentlemen, thank you very much indeed.
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