Business innovation today comes both from entrepreneurs and intreprenuers. But what is an intraprenuer? An intraprenuer is an person employed to drive innovation within a business in order to revitalize and diversify its business.
Tiger Woods, Severe Weather, Brittany Murphy, Avatar, Health Care and Yemen are six of the top ten searches this week. Grab a few names from last nights trivia pursuit, Nikola Tesla, Elisha Grey, Evan Williams, and Walter C. Pipp. Let’s see what we did not easily recall about motivation, success and culture.
Nikola Tesla was one of the great geniuses of the early electrical age. His invention of the alternating current motor set the stage for the power and lighting systems now used every day around the world.- Yet we remember Thomas Edison!
Elisha Grey an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Best known for filing his patent for the telephone three hours after Alexander Graham Bell.
Evan Williams is a college drop out and inventor who started Pyra Labs, Blogger (bought out by Google in 2003) and Twitter opps over a 140 characters! His estimated net worth is $2.3 billion
Wally Pipp a major league baseball player holds NY Yankee record for sacrifices; best know as the player who was removed from the lineup with a headache, permitting Lou Gehrig to begin is 2130 consecutive game streak!
Success today comes from a number of sources, entrepreneurs and intreprenuers.
Bill Gates, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Michael Dell, W.K.Kellogg and Henry Ford might be on the top of many lists. What about Spencer Silver and Art Fry? Intreprenuers are inventors, entrepreneurs inside an organization. Silver and Fry might be the preeminent Intreprenuers, while working at 3M they invented the Post-it® Notes.
Corporations, family businesses, professional partnerships are all organizations. Organizational Development (OD) is a term that is often used. OD is the process of improving organizations. The process is carefully planned and implemented to benefit the organization, its employees and its stakeholders. 3M developed an organization the wanted and prized innovation.” Much of 3M’s rich culture comes from the principles that former President and Chairman of the Board William L. McKnight set forth. McKnight believed “management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. It’s essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.” It is this growth that continues to make 3M a leader in the 21st century. Their achievements are the foundation of a proud past and the bright future of many innovations to come.”
Changes are what the world is about today. The life cycle of almost every product has shrunken rapidly. “It’s not the big that eat the small; it’s the fast that eat the slow.” In many cases its business at the speed of thought and change is what we must do!
Intreprenuers or entrepreneurial organizations, family businesses need innovation. Innovation comes in many guises, in can be organizational structure, in new products or in faster processes; managing the change, nurturing the innovation is the key. A small know fact is that Wally Pipp scouted Lou Gehrig and insisted the Yankees give him a tryout. Pipp was always more interested in the organization.
All the runners in a race compete, only one wins – Lets run to win!
Leave a Reply