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Intrapreneurs differ from entrepreneurs,
study shows
LONDON,
ON, April 1, 2009 – Employees who
launch a new venture within an existing
firm may not share all the attributes of
the classic entrepreneur, but so-called
intrapreneurs have plenty to offer
companies that recognize and encourage
their efforts.
Although
they may be more difficult to identify
than entrepreneurs – who are often known
risk-takers – intrapreneurs can help
companies to reinvent themselves and
boost performance from within, according
to Simon Parker, Director, Driving
Growth Through Entrepreneurship &
Innovation Cross-Enterprise Leadership
Research Centre at the Richard Ivey
School of Business.
"A huge
amount of knowledge creation takes place
within firms. If firms don't take the
best ideas and commercialize them, they
run the risk of people leaving and doing
it themselves," Parker said.
Parker
cites Adobe, started by John Warnock and
Charles Geschke in the 1980s, as an
example of an entrepreneurial pursuit
that had potential to be a successful
intrapreneurial activity. Former
employees with Xerox's Research Centre,
Warnock and Geschke left Xerox to launch
Adobe because their new product ideas
were stalled.
In a recent
study, Parker compared factors
associated with entrepreneurial and
intrapreneurial activity. He used data
from a survey of 32,000 American adults.
Five per cent of the adults were
involved in the early stages of a
start-up either within or outside of a
firm.
While
results showed some potential
identifying characteristics of people
who might be more inclined to
intrapreneurship – such as those who
might consider themselves too old or too
young or lacking the education,
experience and social networks to risk
going out on their own – Parker
concluded there are many unobservable
factors. This suggests the workplace
environment could make a difference in
employees' willingness to get engaged in
new ventures within the firm, he said.
"Intrapreneurs
seem to be those people who would not
normally get involved in a start-up but
are somehow induced to do so by virtue
of the company that they happen to be
in. The key implication for managers is
that employees who don't look
particularly entrepreneurial could turn
out to be good choices to start and run
a new intrapreneurial venture, if
supported," said Parker. "The data is
telling us that this is something that
people of all stripes get involved in.
Virtually anyone can and does do it."
For more
details of Parker's research, please
read the
April edition of impact, an
online monthly publication that features
research from faculty at the Richard
Ivey School of Business. To read the
full article, click here:
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/publications/impact/vol15no4-parker.htm
Impact's
Faculty Focus section features Jim
Hatch, Professor of Finance, Ivey
Business School, discussing Ivey's
cross-enterprise teaching and how it
encourages students to consider business
challenges within the context of global
issues. For the full article, click
here:
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/publications/impact/vol15no4-ff-hatch.htm
About the Richard Ivey School of
Business, The University of Western
Ontario
The Richard Ivey School of Business at
The University of Western Ontario (www.ivey.ca)
offers undergraduate (HBA)
and graduate degree programs (MBA,
Executive MBA and
PhD) in addition to non-degree
Executive Development programs. Ivey has
campuses in London (Ontario),
Toronto, and Hong Kong. Ivey
recently redesigned its curriculum to
focus on
Cross-Enterprise Leadership – a
holistic issues-based approach to
management education that meets the
demands of today's complex global
business world.
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For more
information, please contact:
Dawn Milne, Communications Specialist,
Richard Ivey School of Business,
519-850-2536,
dmilne@ivey.ca
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