At the Rady School of Management, students, faculty and alumni are both innovators and entrepreneurs. Lessons are structured around educating students with the skills to excel in both while operating within the organizational environment. An entrepreneur is someone who innovates by starting his or her own company, whereas an intrapreneur is an employee of an organization whose job is to innovate and create change within the corporation. Thus, intrapreneurs are inside entrepreneurs who follow the goal of the organization.
Are you an Intraprenuer? Intrapreneurs often remain hidden and unrecognized, because they often display behavior contrary to what is considered as “corporate”. They are self-motivated leaders with the courage and flexibility to think outside of the box. According to The League of Intraprenuers, it isn’t a job title, it is a way of working and being:
- Silo Busters: Collaborating across traditional company boundaries.
- Opportunity Spotters: Finding innovation potential where others typically see risk or challenge.
- Systems Thinkers: Seeing the interconnections between business value and societal pressures.
- Storytellers: Bringing others on board with their vision for “shared value”.
- Dreamers:Â Believing that business can be a force for good.
- Doers: With a track record of getting stuff done.
Most large companies are focused on innovation and have dedicated innovation functions and teams to support the innovation agenda. Well known examples of companies who encourage and support projects internally include: Accenture, Coca-Cola, 3M, Xerox, Virgin, Siemens, Intel and Google.
The Rady Career Connections team members help students to target employers where they can align their values, interests, and talents in innovation. In order to land jobs with target employers like the ones noted above, students need to demonstrate past successes and quantify the results of their accomplishments through their resumes and LinkedIn profiles; matching the language of the industry, brand and culture.
Through workshops and 1:1 advising appointments, students are provided an individualized experience to build their professional presentation to achieve their career goals in innovation both inside and outside of organizations.