Innovation is the driving force behind the success of companies; brand new ideas have been making their creators wealthy for centuries and adding momentum to the cycle of an economy. Inventors used to be scientists who were dedicated to research. Today it is increasingly individuals, pioneers of ideas, who bring groundbreaking innovations or products to the market. What used to be the invention of gasoline engines, microwaves, wall plugs or steam engines is now mobile telephony, Instagram or augmented and virtual reality. Every invention that is realized and accepted by the market has the potential to revolutionize the market and user behavior. You can get a chain of follow-up innovations rolling.

Many of the ideas that enrich our lives today were based on coincidences of individuals. If only a few parameters in their lives had been different, there might be no vaccination, no apps and no hyperintelligent computers today, which now solve many problems faster than 100 years ago. But couldn’t it be possible, particularly in larger companies, to directly encourage such intellectual impulses from individual employees and thus increase innovative performance? That is exactly what the idea and intrapreneurship management intends to do.

Idea management – procedure and goals

Idea management pursues a purpose of not only collecting new impulses, but above all utilizing them. It is based on the assumption that theoretically many employees of a company could have valuable ideas that optimize workflows, restructure processes or have innovative product ideas. This potential lies dormant in all established companies, but strict hierarchies and separate responsibilities suppress creativity within one’s own specialist area.

Today these boundaries are fluid and it is not uncommon for companies to have interdisciplinary teams that deal with complex problems and future strategies. These require flexible, creative and innovative thinking. When employees act as intrapreneurs themselves and get involved in creating new solutions, their motivation increases considerably. In corporate cultures that rely on intrapreneurship, employees are given freedom of choice and responsibility. An innovation-friendly and open company culture as well as incentive systems promote the willingness of employees to actively work on innovations.

How does idea management benefit the company directly?

A good example is shown by the chemical company BASF, which has officially set itself the goal of increasing economic performance and innovation in the company through internal idea management. And with great success. Over the past few years, thousands of employees of the global player have submitted their ideas, a team of managers collected them and evaluated them for their feasibility. Thanks to the innovations introduced, the company was able to save over 30 million euros in costs in just one year, part of which was paid back to the employees involved as a performance bonus.

The chemical giant is not the only company that has recognized idea management as an important tool for more innovations in the company. According to a study by the Institute for Business Administration (Germany), more and more companies are trying to motivate their employees to think further and to develop their own impulses. Overall, this is said to have saved the economy over a billion euros in costs or brought in profit.

How does idea management benefit the company directly?

A good example is shown by the chemical company BASF, which has officially set itself the goal of increasing economic performance and innovation in the company through internal idea management. And with success. Over the past few years, thousands of employees of the global player have submitted their ideas, a team of managers collected them and evaluated them for their feasibility. Thanks to the innovations introduced, the company was able to save over 30 million euros in costs in just one year, part of which was paid back to the employees involved as a performance bonus.

The chemical giant is not the only company that has recognized idea management as an important tool for more innovations in the company. According to a study by the Institute for Business Administration (Germany), more and more companies are trying to motivate their employees to think further and to develop their own impulses. Overall, this is said to have saved the economy over a billion euros in costs or brought in profit.

What does it take for intrapreneurship to be effective?

An open and appreciative culture in the company is required for new concepts and fresh impulses. Reinforcement and promotion of creative potential have a great influence on the quantity and quality of ideas. When the employees get the feeling that their technical inspirations are being noticed and taken seriously, a new culture of mutual exchange and complementarity develops in the company. Intrapreneurship is a booster for the realization of ideas and an effective development of a company.

Innovation and new processes or approaches that come directly from the company and are introduced by employees have another advantage: Their acceptance within the workforce is many times higher. Material and immaterial incentives and rewards from particularly creative employees through praise and bonuses also have an influence on motivation that should not be underestimated, which ultimately improves the work performance that is already being achieved. The implementation of these measures is the task of the executives, who promote creative action and, in the best case, manage their departments as profit centers or spin-offs.

Employees as the most important source of innovation

Innovation is one of the most important drivers in competition. Innovation management, as part of a company’s strategic direction, must become even more important. Managing impulses, ideas and innovations and systematically checking them for their value is one of the biggest future tasks of every company, as new products, services and business models are being developed ever faster. Those who rely on innovation will persist in the market over the long term. Employees are the most important source of innovation. Companies that refuse to use the creative potential of their employees are facing an uncertain future and will find it difficult to keep up with the innovative potential of market participants.

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Do you know intrapreneurs? A term and an employee role that has received a real boost in attention and spread within the company in recent years. In the last 5 years alone, Google search results for intrapreneurs and intrapreneurship have more than quadrupled.
While an entrepreneur can be described in the classic sense as the founder and owner of a company, the question often remains, what exactly is an intrapreneur?

An entrepreneur as a classic entrepreneur has decided by founding a company to take risks and take personal responsibility. Nowadays, many young people want to be part of something, actively contribute to innovations and bring their own ideas to the company. It is precisely this attitude that describes an intrapreneur: the intracorporate entrepreneur, an internal counterpart to the entrepreneur – in other words: employees in the company who carry out their work with the same attitude as entrepreneurs, although they are integrated into a company organization. This means taking responsibility independently, thinking in a networked way and aiming for sustainable corporate success with your own actions and the development of new products, processes, services, etc.

In principle, anyone can be an intrapreneur, develop into this in the course of their career, or be enabled to do so. For many companies, however, this is precisely where the greatest challenge lies: to awaken the intrapreneur, to develop it, or even to give the opportunity to discover and allow the intrapreneur in oneself. Subsequently, intrapreneurs must be promoted and a range of tools made available as well as the time to be able to work on their own ideas and innovations.

In this context, the so-called T-shaped skillset is often considered the optimal prerequisite for intrapreneurship. The letter T stands as a metaphor for in-depth knowledge in one’s own specialist area and comprehensive, specialized knowledge (vertical line) and the ability to be able to connect and engage in dialogue with other knowledge and specialist departments, customer milieus, etc. across departmental boundaries (horizontal line) – a basic requirement for successful work in interdisciplinary teams.

Intrapreneurs are therefore personalities who represent one of the most important keys to the future-oriented further development of innovations and ultimately also to the success of a company. These keys only have to be found and used.

How? More on this shortly…

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