Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs play a vital role in economic growth. Compare the differences between entrepreneur and intrapreneur.
An entrepreneur is person who starts a new business, and work to fulfill his dream, vision and goal. An intrapreneur is one who does the work staying inside another organizatiom. This article compares entrepreneur and and intrapreneurs.
Entrepreneurs
An Entrepreneur is one who starts his own business by pooling available resources without working for an organization as an employee. He takes initiative on his own and handles the risks associated with his business. The business can either be funded by himself or through Venture capitalists. An Intrapreneur is a person employed to work independently within a company in order to introduce innovation and to revitalize and diversify its business.
He is very important person who visualizes new opportunities, innovates and develops new products which can boost the economy of a nation.
An Entrepreneur works for himself and develops his own product, he will bear the risks associated with the business as well as enjoy the entire profit generated from it.
Intrapreneurs
Intrapreneurs are innovative and develop new products for an organization and therefore considered as valuable assets of the organization. There are many talented employees who left their organization as their innovative ideas were not accepted and they started their own businesses to become an entrepreneur.
Intrapreneur also shares the same attitude and characteristics of an Entrepreneur but is bound to work within the policies of a company. He also receives the remuneration from the company for which he works and all the profits obtained out of his innovative ideas are taken by the company as they take ownership of the product.
Examples
Some of best examples of Intrapreneurs are Bill Joy, Patrick Naughton and James Gosling who invented the Java Programming language while being a part of Sun Microsystems. While Patrick Naughton decided to leave Sun Microsystems as his ideas were not accepted, McNealy who was the CEO that time asked him about his concerns.
He wrote a 12-page email explaining the necessary changes within the organization. McNealy convinced him to stay and later, Patrick joined with James Gosling to design an elegant programming language called Oak which was renamed as Java later.
Similarly Ken Kutaragi invented the Sony PlayStation as an Intrapreneur working under Sony Computer Entertainment which was a huge hit in the market. Some companies like “3M” encourage Intrapreneurship by allowing its employees to spend fifteen percent of their time working on the projects they like which will help in growth of the company. If projects were successful, the company even funds the projects for further development.
Similarly very good example of Entrepreneurship is the founding of Adobe by Charles Geschke and john Warnock who were previously working for Xerox Corporation. Their innovative ideas were ignored by the company which made them frustrated. Hence they quit and started a company on their own named Adobe Corporation. This company now develops multimedia applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash etc. and has an annual turnover of more than three billion dollars.
Differences
Based on recent research, it was found that around 5% of individuals who had innovative ideas were involved in business start-ups rather than working under a company. While Intrapreneurship is more involved in developing B2B products, entrepreneurial startups are focused towards consumer products.
Another fact found from the research was that age determined the choice between Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs mostly fell under age group of 30-40 and younger individuals were not ready to face risks associated with starting their own business.
In order to become a successful entrepreneur one requires Innovation, risk taking ability and excellent convincing skills. An Entrepreneur should be aware of current market trends and customer requirements very well in order to succeed in business. It involves calculated risk taking and good analysis of the present market conditions.
An Intrapreneur does not take high risk like an Entrepreneur as the benefits or losses of his ideas will be borne by organization and not himself. Also, he can get available resources within the organization and does not require any funds on his own. Hence, Intrapreneurship is considered to be a safer option by the younger generation and they work on their innovative projects within the company.
