When launching to create something from scratch it is important to clarify some ideas:
- Anyone can undertake IT (although not everyone may have the capabilities),
- Having initiative is NOT the same as undertaking, and
- Undertaken within the own company is possible as well.
- Is the company prepared to face this challenge?
- Does the company promote this type of activities?
- Does the worker have a red carpet for it?
- Is there an established system?
- Is there a budget?
- Is there a real will?
- How does the worker benefit?
Paradoxically and despite what one might think, being an intrapreneur is not an easy task, but quite the opposite. The purpose of this post is to give some clues to facilitate entrepreneurship from within. Intra-entrepreneurship requires:
- A full understanding of the organizational structure and processes of the company, ins and outs of the processes, who and how decisions are taken, time required, etc ..., to be able to detect in a precise and solid way the weaknesses , needs, and opportunities for improvement that exist.
- Networking with senior contacts, to help on how to focus the project, inform about decision-makers and enablers, owners of budget, where and how and to whom the project shall be distributed, provide leverage when required, etc. .
- An extensive commercial activity of the project to present it as many times as necessary, ... and never give up.
- High levels of resilience
- Digest high doses of rejection.
In fact, intrapreneurship impacts first on the person him/herself, since it forces his/her to:
- Step out from the comfort zone.
- A solid technical preparation of the idea.
- self-training in new areas
- Perform a commercial activity within the Company
- Great ability to influence and inspire people who: 1. can lend us a hand to document the project, and 2. sell the project.
- Resilience
On the other hand, for the company hosting these employees, the internal fire of this person can be a gold mine, if the asset is identified and the project and the individual are treated with the proper care. The company must be able to generate the mechanisms to detect who, within the organization, has the initiative to undertake, and at the same time have a sufficient flexibility to address, if deemed appropriate and opportunities are seen, projects of this kind. After all, it is still a very cheap way for the company to launch new ideas.
The importance of surrounding oneself with a team
In this sense, the formation of a temporary small team that gives a hand to lay the foundations of a project is essential. We are talking about:
1. A finance person to challenge the idea from an economic - financial point of view. In this regards,
- There is some magic in the ability to convert an idea drawn on paper into profitability metrics. This shall be one of the superpowers of the intrapreneur. It is important to think that the project will obtain an OK-TO-GO from the Management only if the metrics are satisfactory, unless there are other metrics beyond money that play as well an important role, such us: quality metrics, social responsibility metrics, environmental, temporary metrics (time to market), etc.
- Preparing a Business Case can be something very simple, or we can turn it into something so complex that it becomes a nightmare. In this regard, the recommendation is to focus on one or two KPIs, which are to be considered the most relevant ones.
- In same cases we will have no other alternative than guessing some key data: it is impossible to have surrogate data for everything.
- Risks: there is the possibility of arrive to the conclusion that our company is just a financial company since the level of precision expected is at the level of cents of euro, but do not worry: in reality this is really true. And this feeling can be even more tangile in large companies.
Minimum documentation to prepare:
Before putting all the machinery in operation, the deliverables that we must have planned and well worked as an end point to the idea phase would be:
1. A Word document (let´s name it Technical Specification) that develops the idea in a succinct but implacable, unappealable and impeccable way. The following points are suggested:
§ What will be the sources of income,
§ Structure of costs, margins, expenses, prices etc.
§ Relevant metrics
- Cover and index. The cover shall contain the author and the index shall detail all the sections of the business plan.
- Executive summary. This is a summary of the most important aspects of the plan. It should not be excessively long (one page maximum) and should attract attention to whoever reads it and wishes to know the rest of the plan content. The most attractive project data, high-level timing and the conclusions that have already been achieved should be highlighted.
- The differentiating factor of the idea. This section should briefly explain the origin of the idea, how it has progressed and are the differences in comparison with the competitors.
- Description of the market where the idea is focusing, in terms of: size, growth potential, competitive companies.
- The strategy to follow. Consist on describing how to sell the products or services, and the marketing strategy to achieve the objectives.
- Economic - financial information, which will be developed in detail in the Business Case:
§ What will be the sources of income,
§ Structure of costs, margins, expenses, prices etc.
§ Relevant metrics
- Contingency Plan, in case the Project does not go well.
- Annexes: resumes of the people who are part of the team, photographs, plans, market studies, analysis of failure modes.
- As a piece of advice, projects whose pay back time is usually longer than 1 year are not accepted.
- The metrics to be evaluated in this case must be: ROI, VAN, TIR, and Paybcak time.
- As we have explained above, not everything is measurable or the Business Case does not come out in any way - and yet it is worth to prepare it in order to document it and show evidence of why it was bookshelved.
- Problems to solve
- Solution proposals
- Advantages
- Market size
- Timing of activities
Get as far as possible with 0 euros
If we look back to what we have done so far, the cost of everything is 0 euros: only the time we have been invested (which, indeed, we could convert it into euros). But this motto (we have reach to this point without spending any money) should be a weapon that the intrapreneur must use to convince and launch his/her project.
In fact, to validate the idea with a cost that does not involve a single euro to the company is the best way to buy other's mental framework. In this regard and in parallel, we must take the path of seeking regional, national and international subsidies:
- There are plenty of R&D& I funds, specially if we have disruptive projects in our hands
- In some cases those funds are returned to the public administrations, since no project deserves to be funded: that is, there is more money than ideas!
- You need to abe to find the right support for the project
- It´s important to properly address the Specification, so that it is consistent in form and content - for this, it is best to get surrounded oneself with experts.
Of course, this will lead us to generate a fourth document: the Memory, which is usually a combination of the previous documents.
The importance of THINKING
People, throughout the entire value chain of the company, must have time to think. Everybody.
We must respect those people who prefer to limit themselves to doing the ABC of the company's activity: fantastic if it is so, but even in the ABC there are opportunities and therefore continuous doses of innovation:
- can we improve the existing processes?
- How can we make them more efficient?
Following this thread, the suggestion is to live in the edge: that is, only living in the limit we will we be able to take the best of ourselves. This implies that the tireless search for innovative and efficient solutions must be a must injected in the veins in our day to day, regardless of the momentum of the company. At the end of the day, the success of the Company, mid and long term,will be largely attached to the ability to innovate of the workers: luckily or unfortunately, innovation and immediacy are the guillotines that mark the day-to-day life of companies.
If we are able to bring in to the Culture of the company this vision of thinking and living in the edge, the results will arrive sooner or later. Without a hint of doubt!.
Books that can help us get new ideas:
- The Medicci Effect, which talks about how doing activities NOT business related can trigger great ideas for the bussiness.
Launch ideas with a start-up mentality
Having the buy-in of the idea from the Seniors on day 0 does not mean that the support will remain. So then, how do we start? How do we fit innovation into the day to day of the company?
Launching an idea with a start-up mentality can be summarized in the following points and in general it helps to maintain support throughout the entire project:
- Reach a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with a zero (or minimum) budget
- Take advantage of the company's existing resources (supporting staff), so that the cost spend of the company remains zero (or minimum)
- Update the documentation based on the lessons learned, especially the timing of the project - so no learning is lost
- Pivot, when necessary
- Be ultra efficient in all the initiatives you take: you are usually alone, so you will have no other alternative
- Report out what you have achieved
- Provide the Project with a lot of transparency
- Be humble, in general.
Corollary
The entrepreneurial activity should be present every day of the year, in the day-to-day life of companies and the people who belong to them. The reality is that it is carried out but not documented, and teams are not aware of the the importance of capturing this acquired knowledge, especially for the future.
It is preferable to start the innovative activity when the company's results come along: it will be easier to find support and budget.
When studing a new project, it is important to give the proper approach to the Business Case. Companies do NOT always look for an economic benefit: on the contrary, it can be of another type: quality, time, efficiency, etc.
Attract / generate / launch ideas is not a simple task. The company must be able to generate the ideal environment so that those ideas are planted and rise naturally and spontaneously. All those involved in the creation process must be paid back somehow, feel involved and important, y any means.
Stressing processes and putting them to the limit allows to go beyond. It is beneficial to screen the market in search of opportunities: going to Trade Fairs, reading articles, be in touch with the start-up universe, shall help. There are technologies on the market today that were immature 5 years ago - we must take advantage of this momentum now.
When the time comes, workers are likely to have to adapt to new ways of working. It must be taken into account that many of today's positions will change or disappear, in any case it is possible that the company wants to amortize them, which does not mean that workers might lose their jobs: they must learn new skills to adapt to the new type of work that are coming in.
At the time of intrapreneurship, one of the risks companiesy can face is to have too many roosters in the same chicken coop: in other words, ignore how to retain people with entrepreneurial interior fire. The ability to maintain this type of profiles also requires a great capacity for innovation by the human resources department.
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