5 ways companies can leverage ‘intrapreneurs’ to overcome internal hurdles to innovation

5 ways companies can leverage ‘intrapreneurs’ to overcome internal hurdles to innovation

Established companies have distinct advantages in the innovation process.







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Kellogg professor Jeffrey Eschbach says established companies have unique resources and capabilities to overcome common internal blocks to innovation.

Intrapreneurs, or internal entrepreneurs, are strong company leaders who can champion clear paths of communication across multiple teams.  

To increase creativity and collaboration, Eschbach recommends focusing on customer needs and leveraging resources including internal platforms, data sets, and customer feedback. 

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Rapid innovation can be tougher to achieve at established companies than at startups. After all, when the drive to iterate, fail, and keep honing new products and services has to coexist with long-standing operations, there is bound to be some friction.

But intrapreneur teams are critical to keeping up with the ever-increasing pace of disruption “” particularly in an environment made even more unstable by the global pandemic.

"In the past, if you got the lead and you controlled the market, you could do so for a long time. Now, we're seeing that disruption-cycle shorten," said Jeffrey Eschbach, an adjunct professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Kellogg.

So in an