A Salute to Social INTRApreneurs
Once, having accepted a position at one of the Big Four accounting firms, I was confronted with a great deal of criticism and taunts that I had become a ‘corporate sell-out’. Those who appreciated my passion for social progress, could not possibly understand my desire to work in a large corporation. This sprung from the outdated belief that companies have no interest and no role in social change. However, recently it has become clear that some firms do hold a recipe for this, and within it, one key ingredient: a social intrapreneur.
Social intrapreneurs are those who use their entrepreneurial spirit to reinvent their company’s business model and create a lasting social impact. Their innate value is not their need for a meaningful profession, but their willingness to add meaning to their existing job. So many of us spend our lives searching for companies that reflect our values, whereas we should actually be revolutionising the ones we already work in. Naturally, this entails us finding the economic value of a social project, but also means that a huge array of resources are available to us. Though social intrapreneurs do not have the independence of self-starters, they are already surrounded by specialists in their field and can increase the scale of a project through their company’s network.
Given the growing importance of stakeholders in corporate strategies, social projects are likelier to receive more support than opposition. Companies have begun realising that their success depends on their social impact, as illustrated by Samuel Palmisano (previous Chairman of IBM) asking “why would society allow us to operate?”[1] Though some companies have attempted to fill this requirement through philanthropic donations or small community activities, larger opportunities lie in social intrapreneurial projects. Rather than simply writing a cheque, or giving employees the day off to volunteer at a shelter, companies can use the innate skills of their workforce to create value, both for society and the corporation.
Companies with a competitive advantage in a given field simply have to identify gaps in society where their services or products could solve a major issue. This is well illustrated by the current transformation being led by Graham Simpson at GlaxoSmithKline, a company specialised in healthcare products.
Having identified the need for quicker diagnostics in Kenya, Simpson advocated for the creation of specialised kits which could be used with little professional knowledge[2]. In this manner, Simpson is effectively using the resources of his company to create deeper value for society.
This is all anyone with a social mind-set should be attempting to do within large corporations. Rather than daydreaming of quitting our jobs and finding a company with a deeper concern for society, we simply have to create the meaning we seek.
[1] Palmisano, S. (2012). Now it gets interesting: Global integration act ii. In The 2012 Guglielmo Marconi Lecture. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/usuario/Downloads/LISBON_COUNCIL_Palmisano_Lecture.pdf
[2] Bulloch, G. (2013). Social intrapreneurs: the changemakers working inside companies. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/small-business-blog/2013/apr/17/social-intrapreneurs-changemakers-companies
Comments Off on A Salute to Social INTRApreneurs /
24 Mar 2014
por
anabeatriceacuna
IMSD /
.png)
].gif)
.png){kind=logo}
].png)
].png)
].png)
].png)
.png){kind=logo}
].png)
.png){kind=logo}
