Want Innovation? Unleash Your Intrapreneurs

Padilla fielded a survey in the latter half of 2024 designed to get at the current attitudes and priorities of U.S. leaders. You can download the C-suite Perspectives report here.

The TL/DR version is that inflation and economic volatility remain top concerns; however, three issues were hot on its tail:  

• Results: delivering on business performance targets and adapting to market shifts
• Technology: protecting data privacy/security, modernizing infrastructure and whether and how to leverage AI  
• People: attracting/retaining talent and supporting employee well-being  

Fast forward to today, and whatever defined uncertainty for our survey respondents has been eclipsed by the actions taken, rescinded and re-taken by the new Administration. This whiplash and disruption appear to be our new reality.  

And that begs the question that every leader must be asking themselves right now: How do we navigate our way through this fog? If history is any indicator of what we can expect, some leaders will keep their heads down and stick to their plan in the hopes of riding it out. Some will decide to reduce their risk profiles by aggressively managing all costs and reducing or eliminating spending on anything not deemed absolutely essential. Both approaches may do just fine, but they won’t win big.

The Great Depression brought us Walt Disney. The 70’s ushered in personal computers. The 90’s saw us commercialize the Internet until the dotcom bubble burst in 2001. Enter blogs, social media and citizen journalism at the expense of traditional media. Netflix started streaming as the economy began to shake in 2007. Bye Blockbuster. Apple brought us iPhones (2007) and the App Store a year later. Bye BlackBerry. My point being: some brands inevitably win big, and some lose big in periods of economic volatility.  

In McKinsey’s 2023 article, Innovation: Your Solution to Weathering Uncertainty, the authors sum it up as follows: “In times of increasing disruption and uncertainty, continuing with business as usual can exceed the risk of leaning into the headwinds. To join the ranks of the truly resilient and enable through-cycle growth, now is the time to choose a new innovation portfolio, discover fresh insights and opportunities, and evolve your business models.”

That’s all well and good, but practically speaking, the difference between planning for innovation and making it happen are rooted in a company’s leaders, talent and culture. And that’s where failure often finds its way in despite all good intentions and adequate funding. Teams all too often get bogged down by established processes, company politics, fear-of-failure, slow decision-making and the pursuit of perfection.  

Every organization takes a different approach to innovation, but success is rarely driven by edicts from the top or following protocol. Real, meaningful change is driven by an individual or small group within an organization who see opportunity where others don’t; who have a passion for making things happen that others don’t; and who aren’t afraid to stake their future success on their ideas where others don’t.  

These are the intrapreneurs, and they exist in every organization. If you want a change-resilient culture, find them, engage them, empower them and watch what happens. They’re a lot easier to find than you think, btw. They’re the ones who are talking in the hallways about a new app or online platform they’ve been playing around with; about something cool they heard on a recent podcast; about some AI agent they’ve been using for their side hustle.

When social media first burst on the scene, we created a reverse-mentoring program at our agency. Junior staff mentored senior staff about what this new technology was all about and what role it could play in our – and our clients’ success. It worked, and today that part of the business – which didn’t exist 20 years ago is now 20% of some agency’s fees.  

The stakes are even higher today with adopting AI. How can we use it to create new – and capture share in existing – revenue streams? How can we use it to drive costs out of our company and supply chain? Both questions are real, and the threat of not tackling them – and quickly – is existential to many, if not all, organizations worldwide.  

There are no simple answers, but the people chomping at the bit to help are your intrapreneurs. Unleash them to lead the charge to create your company’s next wave of innovation and growth.

This article was first published on Bulldog Reporter.