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Introduction
This presentation makes a part of the investigation work that the author develops inside the line of investigation in management of the knowledge, in the project intrapreneurship in the Administration Faculty of the University of El Rosario.
The socioeconomic world situation of the beginning of the XXIst century takes the change as a basic characteristic, any organization or social entity must face the intricate challenges that it supposes operating immersed on a global market and in an epoch of uncertainty. These challenges are complex and enormous; they are great the offers to overcome them, and they all present a characteristic with which they coincide: that the innovation is the promoter of the intensive changes.
The complex challenges which the organizations face, are approached by the intrapreneurs with an active response that demands the precocious perception of the weak signs in the market they are unrolled. Understanding therefore that a weak sign is an information in the surroundings, which has the potential of affecting itself, but on that scarcely we have information, which implies to prompt in the intrapreneur innovation, driver of intensive changes that allow to move, to get away from the strategic accumulation and to achieve sustainable growth.
1. General aim
To develop an intrapreneur model proposal that allows the organizations to generate innovation for getting sustainability.
2. Methodology
A model proposal is elaborated based on two experimental investigations in which process the methods used were:
The approach of the third study is a qualitative investigation, consisting of a personal interview to executives, inviting them to describe a case of initiation and execution of a strategic change under their personal patronage. The investigation is crossed by the hermeneutics, which helps to give specification to the qualitative thing.
3. Intrapreneur model proposal
The present Intrapreneur theoretical model tries to predict the effect of the independent variables, organizational and individual characteristics, and the creation of the intrapreneur organizational context, on the dependent variable ‘innovation’ in the organizations. In the management of the knowledge frame, the intrapreneur model is conceived in the variable ‘organizational characteristics’, as the one which allows to tune the organization, as soon as facilitating these, it is easier to stimulate the intrapreneur innovation; the second variable ‘individual characteristics’ orientated to generating attitudes in the intrapreneur; The third variable seeks to use the knowledge to form, and to shape teams, to identify opportunities, and the fourth variable, which besides is the dependent one, approaches the radical, gradual, arquitectural and conceptual innovation, to share the knowledge, tacitly, explicitly and virtually.
3.1. Sustainability
For the group of managerial sustainability of the University of El Rosario, a lasting company is that one which across the time presents financial top results, adapts its managing to the intensity of the market forces, focuses in not exploited spaces and does a detailed study of its competitors, designing and executing productively the chain of value.
It is also the one that obtains performances conductive to morbile conditions that impede its profitable growth and that can come to tannic conditions.
3.2. Organizational Characteristics
The high intrapreneurs are the first organizational characteristic, Lombriser (1999:27) defines them as the general managers that are in charge of the global responsibility of their organization. These executives are studied by their behavior during the development of a strategic discontinuous change. Having in account the results of the investigation of Lombriser (1999) and the study realized by Garzón (2004), who study behaviors of leadership that they led to strategic changes in the organizations.
Understanding strategy as the capacity of the organization to develop activities different from the competition, therefore it consists of being different; to choose deliberately a set of activities to give one combination of value (Porter, 1999). The previous thing is achieved: forming the environment, achieving competitive positions, achieving positioning, confronting the competition, being flexible. It is also important to understand the operative efficiency, to avoid to confusion it with the strategy, understanding the first one as the accomplishment of similar activities better than the competition, the previous thing understands, according to Porter (1999): efficiency, practices to use better the resources, productivity, quality, rapidity, constant improvement.
In the same way it is necessary to understand the strategic accumulation as a way of establishing the degree of charming of a sector. This refers that the strategist has an instinct that takes the organizations that he directs to move collectively trying to imitate those that stand out. This situation destroys value: rapidly the profits obtained by the leader of the market will be divided among the group that converges on the same space of market. Naterman (2000).
It is also necessary to approach the concept of convergence analysis that implies observing the type of products that are offered and their attributes, the needs that they want to satisfy, the channels of access, the behavior of the price and the levels of advertising that they handle, to develop an analysis of convergence to establish the imitation levels. The effects of the strategic convergence and its major pathology, the imitation, erodes more than any other phenomenon the profitability of the sectors (Natterman, Larsen and Markides (2000), the above mentioned phenomenon implies high levels of imitation that shape heaped sectors, to the interior of which, the managerial practices orientated by the competitive referenciation, they muffle the creativity and accelerate the route towards the low rates of profitability.
In the same form it is explained that the process of perception contemplates the detection and tracking of the weak signs. This aspect refers to an active response that demands the precocious perception of the weak signs on the market in which the organizations are unrolled. We will understand therefore that a weak sign is an information in the environment, which has the potential of affecting the same one, but on which scarcely information is possessed. Therefore strategic changes are led by the high intrapreneurs, they create and share with others a new model of success, develop and implant in the organization an exciting vision on its future, this it is named a strategic change. To obtain this vision, they encourage and reward the behavior and the acceptance of the entrepreneur risk. Hereby the high intrapreneurs trace actively the environment in order to detect the early signs of new opportunities and threats, they look for these opportunities and try to turn the threats into opportunities, introduce the change soon, when the information is incomplete. Lombriser (1994: 207).
The theory of resources and capacities (RR.CC), the second organizational characteristic considers the organization as a set of resources and capacities that form competitive advantages. This theory appears in the decade of the eighties in the academic area, and it is possible to consider it as the precursor of the knowledge management, since it centers on analyzing the resources and the capacities of the organizations as base for the formulation of their strategy. The theory based on the resources is fitted inside the ‘strategic analysis’, and produces a draft of the exterior to the interior of the organization in the moment to analyze its strategic situation.
Hereby the intrapreneur can make his work of innovation with base in the resources that the organizations have, among them we can enumerate: the economic ones for the financing of their ideas (risk capital, cardinal venture, or the patient capital), it is also the technological base, since he can use the installed plant in his idle time, to produce a new article or service, Pinchot (1985:97); but the major advantage is on the market, the distribution and services, which facilitate the process of promoting the new goods or services, using their channels of distribution.
The third organizational characteristic is the knowledge management that, with the advent of the age of the information and the economy of the knowledge, has transformed the knowledge in an assets and in an economic basic resource, the concept of knowledge management as an extension of the theory of the resources and the capacities allows to analyze how the intangible ones are evolving in the time, it is, to be informed if our intangible assets increase or diminish among comparable periods of time.
The organizational learning, the management of the knowledge and the measurement of the Intellectual capital are related and complementary concepts. Briefly, the organizational learning is the base of a good knowledge management, and the knowledge management is the base for the generation of the intellectual capital and organizational capacities.
In the model proposal of organizational learning by Garzón (2005), four variables are contemplated, the first one corresponds to sources of learning, where of ten are identified: the crises and the problems, the clients, the specialized units, the procurement, the competition, the experience and the practitioner, the technology, the nets, the history and the suppositions.
The second one, levels of learning, determines four: Individual, of team, organizational, and inter-organizational. The third one is the culture for the learning that approaches four aspects: the concept of man organization, the structure, the climate and the cultural system. The fourth one is named Conditions for the Learning and is approached from the competences, the communities of practice, the communities of learning, the communities of commitment and the organizational memory.
The fourth organizational characteristic is the Culture that taking into consideration the studies of case consulted of intrapreneur programs, and Garzón’s results (2004) in his construct that reveals the essence of the intrapreneur organizational culture, and the obtained results that ease the intrapreneur work, in hierarchic order they are:
1. TOLERANCE TO THE RISK: The degree in which one encourages the intrapreneur for him to be an aggressive, innovator entrepreneur and traverses moderate risk.
2. SUPPORT: it refers to the impulse of the executives and their sponsor in the intrapreneur activities.
3. IDENTITY: Related to the belonging sense, commitment or to put on the organization’s shirt.
4. INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY: It includes the responsibility, the independence, the freedom of failing, the availability of time to exercise the initiative that intrapreneurs have in the organization, capacity and control on the decisions they make.
5. STRUCTURE: It has relation with the flexibility for the schedules and budgets, with decentralization that accepts the transfer, the disorder, the lack of coordination, resigning to a bit of order, with wide descriptions of positions and little supervision.
6. PERFORMANCE-PRIZE: That needs rewards, in risk capital, more time, promotions, bonds, actions, participation in profits, and personal recognition among others.
7. TOLERANCE TO THE CONFLICT: Especially in the work in interdisciplinary teams.
Source:Garzon 2004
Therefore in order to the intrapreneur to arise, it is needed that the organization generates an organizational culture that offers to the personnel the possibility of finding the opportunities of innovation, simultaneously, to satisfy the desires to feel owner of their internal project without leaving the organization. To create a propitious environment for the innovation and the intrapreneurship, it is necessary to understand and to transfer the concept to all the persons of the organization.
Individual characteristics
There has been a differing between the entrepreneur’s concepts, in strict sense and the one of intrapreneur, the latter being used to say to those individuals that for their particularities, conducts and attitudes play a fundamental role in the change of the organizations, towards creative environments, with a decentralized structure and with rapid capacity of response to the changes of the environment and to shape it, therefore the concept of intrapreneur has come capturing not only the attention of theoreticians and practicals of the administration, as a potential resource is recognized in the entrepreneur capacity of their collaborators for the increase of competitiveness and organizational efficiecy .
The term intrapreneur comes from the French roots of the word “Entrepreneur”, which comes from the term ‘the company’ and the combination of ‘at home’, ‘inside’, therefore intrapreneur calls himself the entrepreneur who resides or is inside the borders of the organizations and it is a social invention that will allow to the persons to express their own potential and being recognized that it was used for the first time by the journalist of The economist, Norman Macrae in 1976 and with the meaning that this document guides on the part of Gifford Pinchot III, founder of Le Escuela de Intrapreneurship, of Tarrytown.
Having looked for the information to determine the individual characteristics of the intrapreneur, it was found that the studies of case and the doctoral consulted theses, present different contributions, but the difficulty to be able to unify criteria takes root in that the analyzed studies were done, the most of them, in countries like The United States, Canada and Europe and from Latin-American countries Argentina and Colombia, and besides with different variables, reason by which a list was formulated with thirty five characteristics that after a process of integration, union and merger it was possible to come to seven, which were used in two experimental investigations by Garzón (1998; 2003) with satisfactory results with regard to validity and statistical reliability and that demonstrates the need to form in the organizations and in the individuals to strengthen this profile and it is achieved to stimulate the innovation in the individuals.
Individual characteristics of the intrapreneur
Managerial spirit and priority for the inner project
Vision and creative and innovative imagination
Need to act, high need of achievement
Dedication, constancy, persistence, tenacity and desire of autonomy
Skill to organize and to work at self-guided teams
Holistic vision of the market needs
Proactive and tolerant to the risk leader
Source:Garzón 1998, 2003.
4.4. Creation of the intrapreneur organizational context
An alternative that arises from both experimental investigations is the intrapreneur program planned explicitly and implicitly on a few bases or foundations, they are proposed the Philosophical, Psychological, Sociological, Andragogic and specifics based on the contributions developed in different disciplines. Whose aim is to prepare the participants in the knowledge for them to take advantage of opportunities of business for the organization.
It is also necessary to establish guidelines for the government of the intrapreneur organizations, for which they propose ten rights: to the freedom, to investigating, to the free association, to taking part democratically in the decisions, to the privacy, to developing knowledge and competences, to justice for all, right to fail and learn of the mistakes, to risk capital, to be sponsored, with which it achieves that an organization authorizes its personnel of any hierarchic level to begin an internal business, stimulating them to look for the clients and the necessary capital to start it. In these institutions the intrapreneurs must use their intelligence to identify solutions to the problems, to decide and to ask for support or help if it is necessary.
Furthermore they are necessary the work nets that refer to the formalization of the organizational learning to turn them into the brain of the free intrapreneurship system, in which the persons and the self-guided teams are the nervous cell and the interpersonal relationships are the synapses, by means of the generosity, the support and the collaboration to take the best from them.
To start an intrapreneur program in an organization, this one must reinvent its financial internal system, to allow its personnel to show their intrapreneur spirit : Intra companies shaped in units of business, creation of a net of internal taxes, the capital of internal adventure or intra capital, intra bank with intra money, risk of the intra capital system.
The recommendations of Pinchot et al. (1999) with regard to the financial intrapreneur system, point to turn the self-guided teams into an adhocracy, which retaking Minstzberg et al. (1997: 324-325) in the first place to the operative adhocracy and in second place to the administrative adhocracy for innovative projects that solves the problems directly in name of their clients.
In the pertinent thing to the risk capital, it is a system of remuneration, it is money for new projects or those that are in course, it can be saved and assigned to the most entrepreneur people in the organization
.It is not a gift, is the capital of risk or of adventure, it is remuneration for the creativity, the investigation and to the future planning, therefore the intrapreneur teams can use the money for new projects.
The previous thing demands the creation of an organizational unit that handles the money (intra money) to draw checks of intra money, to grant loans to other teams, establishing a adequate system to control these transactions, eliminating the excessive control, which Sykes (1986) names the “ bear’s embrace of the administrative controls”.
Regarding the risks of the intra the capital system, it can generate losses in the short term, but the intrapreneur teams are gifted according to Pinchot et al. (1999), to face difficult times, besides their losses can be compensated with the earnings for others in the organization.
Another important aspect is to use the intra-money savings being able to continue with the projects, with constancy and dedication. The suitable managing of the risk capital and an entrepreneur financial system allows the organizations to be stronger to face financial problems.
4.5. The innovation
The innovation is the action of introducing or producing something new, an idea, method, instrument, ways of thinking about the business, services, of entering to the market, of producing, forming or organizing, solving problems, realizing adjustments and modifications of goods and services destined to solve needs or generating new ones. They are classified by Garzón (2005) as:
•Incremental Innovation or of minor changes; modular innovation, by stages: it means that they are changes in the way the components of a product link themselves, to join in a new, more efficient and effective way.
•Radical Innovation:
Understood as the one that needs experimentation and represents the inaugural schemes.
•Architectural innovation:
It contemplates the impact of the components in the system, producing significant changes in the component interaction of a product. (Henderson & Clark 1990:9-13).
•Conceptual Innovation:
Defined as the aptitude to design from radically different business concepts to new ways of differentiating the existing ones.
The above mentioned things represent the development of a new concept of business, wider and essentially different, which improves drastically the functions of the product, with fundamental changes in the essence of the business. (Hamel 2000) Therefore it is the typology that is in use in this investigation.
5. Analysis and discussion of results
We can summarize that the behavior facets of the high intrapreneur are multiple. They are analyzed later as a result of the realized exploratory study. It confirms the results obtained by Lombriser (1994:207) in which it was found that the intrapreneurs trace actively the surroundings to detect the weak or early signs of new opportunities and / or threats. According to Lombriser (1994:207) the high intrapreneurs plan the new strategy, are implied personally and directly in the strategy planning: involving all the important persons and with responsibility in the execution of the strategy.
The high intrapreneurs studied by Lombriser (1994: 208) initiate the planning but they delegate the detailed planning, support a joint vision of the process and establish controls.
Taking into account the construct elaborated by Garzón (2002: 51) that reveals the essence of the intrapreneur organizational culture, the obtained results that ease the intrapreneur work, in hierarchic order are: tolerance to the risk, support to the innovative ideas, identity and belonging sense, autonomy, structure, performance-prize, tolerance to the conflict.
The innovation that according to Lombriser (1994: 212) the important thing is the process, and the mentality, in the matter the interviewed people set that it is the most important aspect for the innovation generated in their organizations.
Another aspect identified as fundamental for the successful change generation for the innovation development in their organizations is: The organizational learning. It confirms Garzon’s approaches (2005).
The following are the aspects that do not match with the profile of high intrapreneur proposed by Lombriser (1994: 214) and that he classifies as “ less effective regarding the reasons of the innovation:
The change was my idea alone, and I planned and developed the strategy, because of money and tiredness matters that force to innovate, because of misunderstandings with the clients, complaints of the clients, the technological advances, the high costs of the raw material, the “Dofa” analysis, to improve the market share, to solve maintenance problems and to replace imports.
Lombriser (1994: 207) identifies the previous thing as the development of reactive strategic information, reacting to the threats and introducing late the change when the signs are not so strong yet.
Conclusions
The model, the program and its running generate results that have a direct relation between the change of attitudes and the generated innovation. The organizational learning has a very significant role in the organization dynamics and the intrapreneur program allows attitudes changes and stimulates the innovative talent that is in the own workers who operate on the innovation tools. One of the changes to managing is that some workers or personnel, no matter the level, become entrepreneurs of the same organization, it is, intrapreneurs who contribute in order to achieve diversification, growth or expansion what in turn is reflected in an increase of profits and new work sources.
The investigations reinforce the approaches of Kuatko and Hodgetts (1992), Pinchot (1985, 1987); Garfield (1992); Clagett (1992); Karagazoglú (1993); Horsby et al (1993) having shown that the individual characteristics of the intrapreneurs can be taught, by means of a program channeled to the change of attitudes and development of the participants skills in: managerial initiative, vision and creative and innovative imagination, need of achievement, witness and dedication to the inner project, teamwork, holistic vision of the market needs and Leadership, which fit the individual characteristics of the model.
In the same way it is possible to infer that will existed on the part of the first managerial level of the organizations, reinforcing the approaches of Allaire et al (1992:23); Trevenet (1991:7); Kuatko (1992 chapter 4); Pinchot (1985:281 to 281); Barth (1988: 39); Sykes (1986); regarding the factors that favor the intrapreneur behavior, it is possible to outline the organizational characteristics as the low centralization, a decision-making system of multiple levels and the organizational learning.
By decoding the information obtained in the experiments we can find that the organizational culture, at the beginning of the study in the factic level, is different from the behavior of the individuals of the experimental group at the end of the process, being therefore a modification of the organizational culture manifest in the change of attitude achieved with the training in the intrapreneur model, it demonstrates that the process proposed by Thravenet (1992) to generate changes in the organizational culture through the sensitization understood as formalization, diffusion and formation, and complemented by the action constituted by the triptych ‘programming, formation and action’ generates the alluded results.
The elaboration of the theoretical frame allowed likewise to bring us near to a definition of innovation and its typology, which allows interpreting the results obtained in the projects realized by the participants in the experimental groups, as of gradual innovation.
The conceptualization of organizational learning, allowed to design the intrapreneur program, and the approximations realized to the concept of attitude orientated the design of the used instruments, the information analysis, the construction of the variables relation with the factors that are determinant in the change of intrapreneur attitudes.
Chart No 2. The result of analysis
| Area | Strengths of the intrapreneur | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Observes and monitors the surroundings. | Lack of orientation to the conceptual, gradual or architectural innovation. Development of reactive information, “reacting” to the threats. |
| 2 | It plans, interferes and foresees, with experience and knowledge. | Absence of long term vision. Late introduction of the change, when the signs are already strong. Generation of accumulation because of the imitation. |
| 3 | Assumes the responsibility of the success or of the failure. | Centralization in the decisions making. |
| 4 | Assumes as priority the feature of culture tolerance to the risk. | He considers the feature of culture “tolerance to the conflict” as the least important. |
| 5 | Develops gradual innovation and copies. | This development is done intuitively and to survive. |
| 6 | Uses some sources and learning conditions. Favors the individual learning level. | Without knowledge of the theoretical models, result of the testing-mistake. |
The result of the analysis and discussion allows coming to conclusions that we classify as strengths and weaknesses:
Therefore to reach the success in the organizations it is necessary a high intrapreneur who must assemble two qualities and basic skills:
Managerial capacity to visualize in a creative way the strategies that will be adopted for the future.
Organizative skill to create an intrapreneur organizational culture characterized in order of importance for: tolerance to the risk, support to the innovative ideas, identity and belonging sense, autonomy, structure, performance-prize and tolerance to the conflict.
They are the high intrapreneurs those who influence directly in the intrapreneur culture and as it suggests creativity and much flexibility, stimulating these elements needs of a constant work with the persons in order for them to manage to leave the old mental schemes.
The high intrapreneurs interviewed can be classified based on Lombriser as “less effective” by establishing as internal and external reasons of the realized innovation, based on the development of strategic reactive information, reacting to threats and introducing late the change.
The organizational learning should be considered as a key variable for the innovation impulse, integrating different experiences, knowledge and skills around a community in which each member learns from each other, modifying the attitude that is reflected in the behavior of the person and the environment where he/she is unrolled, increasing:
The strategic capacity of the organization.
Reinforcing the capacity of change
Improving the yield or performance of the organization.
The future of the organizations will depend on the capacity that its high intrapreneurs have to innovate and motivate. The aptitude to smell the environment detecting early signs. Also the aptitude to realize the transition from a culture started to an intrapreneur one. Because what nowadays they do allows them to survive. It is necessary to develop in the executives:
Anticipating capacity
Three kinds of thought: systemic, complex and strategic
Capacity for unlearning and fit their mental models.
Taking into account realized interviews, the high intrapreneurs provide a systematical, active and strategic management during the whole change process, but with a short-term vision, affected by their mental models. For this reason performances conductive to morbile conditions are obtained, which impede their profitable growth and that can come to tatanic conditions.
The most important thing is that they are not one or two things those that do that everything works, so that they are necessary the organizational and the individual characteristics, and the creation of the organizational context in order to support the innovation.
The results that are obtained must be thought as a part of the individual conduct, not all of it because the attitudes are multidimensional concepts, they are several the factors that integrate the attitudes and they are of affective, cognitive and conative type.
Finally the results that are obtained are temporary and must be reinforced by the organizational characteristic and the creation of the organizational context.
