Personal Branding and Intrapreneurship: A Match Made in Heaven?

  • 1 min read

Have you ever thought of being an intrapreneur? And no, I don’t mean entrepreneur – but they’re close.

While an entrepreneur ventures out on their own to pursue an idea, an intrapreneur does this within the organization where they already work. It could be creating a new product, coming up with an innovative idea, or improving a service.

Why would you choose this route?

  • Intrapreneurship allows you to take risks and develop ideas with company resources instead of your own.
  • It helps you to take on a leadership role and collaborate with other departments.
  • Developing a new idea can help you become more excited in your current role.
  • The company could benefit from a successful idea.
  • Being intrapreneurial aids you in establishing a personal brand at the company and adds to your experience.

Many great ideas came from intrapreneurs inside major companies:

  • Post-it notes were developed by a 3M employee when he noticed a problem (papers falling out of his book) and came up with a solution (sticky paper).
  • An employee working at Nintendo realized that video games could be improved by changing the system and improving the sounds and graphics, and ended up creating the Sony PlayStation as we know it today.
  • The senior vice president of marketing at Caribou Coffee discovered that their chain needed something to compete with other large chains – so she came up with a customer frequency card to reward loyal customers.

In fact, many companies encourage employee side projects. According to Josh Spiro at Inc. magazine, “companies of varying sizes ranging from Google to Gore-Tex and from 3M to Jason Fried’s 37 Signals have experimented with different ways to catalyze their employees’ idiosyncratic interests for the benefit of the entire company and its culture.

Google’s famous 70/20/10 arrangement sends employees the message to spend the lion’s share of their work hours fulfilling their job description in the narrowest sense, while allotting one fifth of their time to company-related innovation and one tenth to whatever catches their fancy.”

Picture of Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder & president ​of Come Recommended, a career and workplace education and consulting firm specializing in young professionals. She is also the author of#ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist forExaminer.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

The signs of a hard childhood rarely look dramatic by adulthood, therapists who work with trauma survivors say; more often it is a habit of apologizing before speaking, flinching at a raised voice that was never aimed at them, or checking that everyone else is okay before letting themselves relax.

The signs of a hard childhood rarely look dramatic by adulthood, therapists who work with trauma survivors say; more often it is a habit of apologizing before speaking, flinching at a raised voice that was never aimed at them, or checking that everyone else is okay before letting themselves relax.

Global English Editing
A national survey found that the share of men reporting they have no close friends at all climbed from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent by 2021, with the steepest rise showing up right around the age most men leave the workforce

A national survey found that the share of men reporting they have no close friends at all climbed from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent by 2021, with the steepest rise showing up right around the age most men leave the workforce

Global English Editing
People who apologize before anyone’s said what’s wrong may be doing more than displaying extra manners — research on parentification has found that children who grow up feeling responsible for a parent’s emotional state can carry that habit of anticipating, managing, and taking responsibility for other people’s feelings into their adult relationships, long after the household that taught it is gone.

People who apologize before anyone’s said what’s wrong may be doing more than displaying extra manners — research on parentification has found that children who grow up feeling responsible for a parent’s emotional state can carry that habit of anticipating, managing, and taking responsibility for other people’s feelings into their adult relationships, long after the household that taught it is gone.

Global English Editing
People keeping a secret reported hiding it in conversation far less often than it simply came to mind on its own, and it was those uninvited moments that went with feeling worse

People keeping a secret reported hiding it in conversation far less often than it simply came to mind on its own, and it was those uninvited moments that went with feeling worse

The Vessel
Picture next week and notice which way it runs, left to right, or toward you, or away, because whichever answer you just got, there are people who grew up finding a completely different one every bit as obvious as yours

Picture next week and notice which way it runs, left to right, or toward you, or away, because whichever answer you just got, there are people who grew up finding a completely different one every bit as obvious as yours

The Vessel
There are things about a life that are worth keeping to yourself even with people you trust completely, not because there is anything shameful in them, but because privacy is one of the few forms of ownership nobody can take from you once you have given it away.

There are things about a life that are worth keeping to yourself even with people you trust completely, not because there is anything shameful in them, but because privacy is one of the few forms of ownership nobody can take from you once you have given it away.

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore