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Intrapreneurs, the toast of corporate

innovation

The dotcom bust may have taught corporates some hard lessons about fluctuating fortunes.However, one positive aspect that emerged out of that was that the phase laid out one of the most

fertile grounds for creative endeavours.

Several corporates are now willing to create an atmosphere where creativity is encouraged. The

official term for it is intrapreneurship.

Conceptually, it means a situation where a company uses the talents and dynamic abilities of its

employees to develop innovative inhouse projects and services.

While some companies go to the extent of allowing employees to develop internal start-ups, others

make it a point to take serious note of their suggestions. What more, company annual performanceappraisals have started giving much weightage to innovation and creativity displayed by

individuals at the work-place.

Another reason why corporates feel the need to encourage intrapreunership is because, they believeit is the best way to retain talented staff. "Otherwise, most of them will just quit and develop these

ideas on their own. I think helping them evolve is a win-win situation for everybody. It helps the

company gain a new value proposition and at the same time the employee is well compensated,"says Ganesh Natarajan, CEO, Zensar Technology.

Giving an example of how intrapreneurship has worked wonders for his organisation, he says,

"One of our teams developed a new solution pattern departing considerably from the old one. Itwas highly successful and today, at least 60 per cent of our work is done through it," he adds.

Vismaya Firodia, vicepresident, Kinetic India, says that one of their recent models, the Zing, wasan idea that came from one of their employees. "He suggested to us that we must think about

having a mobile charger in a mobike. It was innovative and was quite appreciated. The research

and development (R&D) team is naturally at the core of such creativity, but we by all means wantto encourage it among all employees," she says.

The idea seems to have percolated to all sectors. Lalit Kumar Jain of Kumar Properties says, "Atleast 80 per cent of the projects that are floated come through the recommendation of my

employees."

An indication of how several companies are looking at creative minds more seriously than ever

before can be gauged from what Naushad Forbes of Forbes Marshall says: "We have something

called the 'sunset clause', wherein any idea given by an employee has to be screened by the end of

the following day. If not, the manager has to necessarily back the idea."

Arun Khanna of Emcure adds, "In the pharmaceutical industry, most of the product ideas come

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from employees. They know the customer best afterall."

Keeping in view changing management needs and emerging scenarios, various MBA institutes aregetting cued in to the trend. Like the Indira Institute of Management (IIM) has initiated a global

entrepreunership programme, wherein 20 top entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs will be invited to the

campus.

"The need of the hour is for people who are creators rather than followers.While entrepreunership

is the most recommended way to create job opportunities and unleash talent, intrapreneurshipoffers security and access to better resources," says Chetan Wakalkar, head of the institute.