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The past two decades have belonged to entrepreneurs. As innovative technologies continually reshaped our lives, ambitious founders became the icons of the age. Now, it’s intrapreneurs’ chance to share the spotlight.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, intrapreneurship is similar to entrepreneurship except it occurs inside an existing company. Wired cited “intrapreneurship” as a new source of happiness at work and offered this definition: “Whereas entrepreneurship is the act of spearheading a new business or venture, intrapreneurship is the act of spearheading new programs, products, services, innovations, and policies within your organization.”
Intrapreneurship programs are a win-win for businesses and employees. They allow companies to leverage their best and brightest thinkers, and they offer talented workers greater autonomy over their careers.
As AI transforms workplaces and reimagines employees’ roles within their organizations, it could also give rise to a more innovative workforce. With AI taking over low-level tasks and giving employees both the luxury of more time and increased pressure to demonstrate their relevance, we will likely see a move toward increased intrapreneurship.
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Leave the grunt work to AI
The average U.S. adult sends and receives 224 messages a day. Unsurprisingly, the more often people message, the less productive — and less happy — they are by the end of the workday. How can you feel fulfilled by your work when you spend more than 20 hours a week in your inbox?
Imagine if instead of getting caught in low-value email threads, employees were able to reclaim that time and invest it in new ideas. Rather than plodding through their inboxes, they could be researching customer pain points, analyzing anomalies in market trends, and brainstorming improvements to the sales funnel. More importantly, imagine that they could then use their findings to develop innovative solutions for their companies.
New artificial intelligence platforms are capable of parsing and responding to emails and scheduling requests, unshackling employees from their inboxes for the first time in decades. AI is also becoming a key tool in data entry and report generation, further relieving workers of the least cognitively rewarding tasks. One World Bank productivity expert stated, “All over the world, including in the United States and Europe, jobs are shifting from routine tasks, which are prone to automation, toward interactive tasks, which require advanced cognitive and behavioral skills.”
The age of intrapreneurship
AI systems will be the defining technologies of the coming decades and will usher in a raft of new workplace trends. It makes sense that intrapreneurship would be one of them. Many people dream of starting their own company when they feel dissatisfied or unfulfilled in their current job. But the demands of launching a business can exacerbate everyday stresses, especially given the uncertainty inherent in the entrepreneurship process. Others may feel entrepreneurial yearnings but resist pursuing them due to financial or familial obligations. Millennials are a case in point. Despite expectations that they would be “the most entrepreneurial generation,” this demographic is burdened by heavy student loan debt that makes it difficult to sacrifice a sure paycheck for the dream of self-employment.
But that’s where employers have an opportunity. By giving workers freedom to explore and iterate on their ideas, companies can produce groundbreaking new products and services while keeping their best people engaged. AI is already leveling the playing field between small businesses and Fortune 500s in terms of resource-efficiency and data-gathering. The next frontier in business competition is sustained innovation, and intrapreneurs will become invaluable as AI frees them to do better, deeper work for their companies.
Instituting intrapreneurship
People are happiest when they feel their lives have meaning, and there’s no better way to foster a sense of purpose than to let workers take ownership of their ideas — and the company’s future.
The purpose of such programs is not to give employees free reign to use company resources on whatever catches their fancy. Leaders can ensure the success of an intrapreneurship policy by creating a clear structure and criteria for evaluating and approving employee projects. The process for developing intrapreneurs starts with letting employees know which managers to approach with their ideas and how to self-evaluate their pitches to increase their chances of approval. The better everyone understands the company’s current needs and priorities, the more relevant employee initiatives are likely to be.
Managers should also watch for employees who show particularly entrepreneurial tendencies. Promising signs include self-motivation, directness in communication, adaptability, and a high degree of commitment to their work. By nurturing talented innovators and encouraging them to share their ideas, managers can set the tone for the types of programs they want to cultivate.
We can all be intrapreneurs now
The most successful intrapreneurs — and the companies they work for — will use artificial intelligence to not only automate repetitive tasks but to drive progress. As employees become more familiar with AI platforms, they should look for ways to further leverage those capabilities within the organization.
Founding a business isn’t an option for everyone. But professionals throughout the workforce can nurture their entrepreneurial instincts and develop fulfilling, self-led careers through the opportunities AI is making possible. Indeed, some of the most interesting AI applications may well come from a new class of intrapreneurs.
Additional article contributors: Mehdi Ghafourifar and Brian Walker.
Brienne Ghafourifar is a cofounder of Entefy, an AI communication technology company building the first universal communicator.
The article originally appeared at Entefy.
