The Intrapreneuring Manifesto
How to innovate when you’re surrounded by people who don’t see what you see.
Newsflash: you don't work at a hyper-innovative company like Netflix, Google, or Amazon. But if you're an entrepreneur at heart, can you thrive in a company that resists change? How is innovation in an established company different than in a startup?
Gifford Pinchot tackled these questions in his ground-breaking book, Intrapreneuring, in 1985. He studied big-company innovators of the day like AT&T, Du Pont, and 3M.
The principles he shared have stood the test of time. I first wrote about them in 2010. But they need some updating. Here’s Pinchot’s Manifesto 2.0.
1. Pursue what others don’t see. Over 50% of the intrapreneurs Pinchot surveyed would risk their job over their vision.
Peter Thiel, one of the top investors of all time, asks one question to test for boldness: what do you believe is true that few people agree with you about?
If you see what others don’t, and don’t give a shit if people disagree with you, you might be an entrepreneur.
2. Be a zealous (volunteer) champion. The world is full of politics, ignorance, and apathy. Entrepreneurs pop status-quo-balloons.
Pinchot explained:
"Every failed project in a big company – without exception – lacked a zealous volunteer champion. What was missing was the entrepreneur. The more we look at innovation, the more we find intrapreneurs."
The word volunteer is essential. Nobody will ask you to be an intrapreneur; the fire comes from within.
Or, as Hugh MacCloud explains, telling is easy; collaboration is hard. Step up, don't give up, or in.
Hugh MacCloud, Gapingvoid. I edited this piece with permission. The original read, "Telling people to take a course is easy." I broadened the wording to indicate that making an observation with data is easy, but collaborating to change minds is hard.
3. Find a mentor. Entrepreneurs need mentors. It's not easy to find one. But they have influence, credibility, and authority. They’ve been in the fight and done it, with success. Entrepreneurial mentors are actually not that hard to find.
If you’re hungry and have a mission, ask. Real entrepreneurs will respond. They’re zealous about ideas, like you. Find one.
4. Work underground as long as you can. Doing something new is scary. Keep your mission under the radar as long as possible. Publicity attracts people that want to shoot you down.
Theodore Roosevelt called these people "critics” and “stooges" in his brilliant Man in the Arena speech from 1910. (I replaced the word man with entrepreneur):
"It is not the critic who counts; not the stooge who points out how the entrepreneur stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the entrepreneur who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.
The entrepreneur does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself or herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his or her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt ("man" replaced with "entrepreneur”)
Avoid critics and stooges until it's time (when is that? #10).
5. Circumvent orders aimed at stopping your mission. Traditional planning takes months or years; intrapreneurs make dozens of decisions a day (see Pinchot’s How Intrapreneurs Plan, below).
Entrepreneurs circumvent orders aimed at slowing down how innovation actually works. Use your sponsor when you need help. And remember, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
“How Intrapreneurs Plan,” Intrapreneuring, Gifford Pinchot, 1985
6. Do any job, regardless of your job description. Intrapreneuring is dirty work. As Thomas Edison said, "Vision without execution is hallucination."
Traditional managers delegate; entrepreneurs act. They talk with customers directly—they don’t rely on analysts. The dig for data when it's missing. When there’s a problem, they fix it. It doesn’t matter what your job description is.
7. Honor your sponsors. Entrepreneurs break the rules for their cause. But you’ll need help. Honor sponsors, mentors and investors--let them help you.
8. Follow your intuition about the people you choose, work only with the best. Startups succeed in part because they attract top talent. Entrepreneurs are rebels, cowboys, rule-breakers. Insist on working with the best.
As Reid Hoffman says, your team’s diversity is its genetic code. So if your team is diverse, your choices will be better and less biased.
Build a diverse team, band together, and go.
9. Never bet on a race unless you're running in it. Entrepreneurs don't go all-in until they know which race they're running. Usually, it takes a long time to identify the race, to truly discover which race you’re running.
Consider the "How Intrapreneurs Plan" chart. Notice that some goals are abandoned entirely. This is like a startup that changes their business model as they go or responds to a sudden market change like the pandemic.
Intrapreneurs spend time defining the race before they run it. Then they run hard.
10. Be realistic about your goals. Every overnight success is years in the making. Keep the stages of venture capital investing in mind—the levels are a roadmap to business maturity:
Seed rounds are the concept phase when you build a minimally viable product.
A rounds are for proving your product with early adopters.
B rounds are for going to market. It takes most ideas years to get to this stage. This is when you’re ready to plan how to scale.
C rounds are for scale. Sales and marketing now dominate.
New ideas take years to scale, don’t rush.
Putting it all together
In his research, Pinchot found that innovation in big companies almost never happens without an individual or small group passionately dedicated to making it happen. His manifesto is worth refreshing, remembering, and resharing.
ENDNOTES
(1) I first wrote about Intrapreneuring in 2010, and now again in 2021.
(2) Intrapreneuring is out of print but worth finding. You can find used copies on Amazon or contact me on LinkedIn, and I'll share a Powerpoint slide deck I created that summarizes it.
