Almost all companies are now set up by someone who saw the need in their company. While not all new business ideas are innovative many entrepreneurs still create new businesses – a hallmark of a healthy economy.
The status of entrepreneur — and its counterpart intrapreneur — is primarily assigned mainly to business heads who take risks, innovate and receive financial support from investors and buy-in from customers. What’s the major difference between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur?
What Is The Difference Between Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship?
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is a process that includes taking risks to bring a new product, idea, or service to the market. This definition of entrepreneurship is often expressed in terms of individuals who are taking this risk whether they be independent business owners or employees within a larger company.
Intrapreneurship
An intrapreneur is an inventive person within a company that can help to innovate and create solutions for the organization. An employee of any large corporation, the intrapreneur has the freedom to try new things as long as they do not contradict their employer’s current policies or disrupt operations. Successful intrapreneurs will tend to lean towards areas where they have had some prior success, especially where those prior experiences are related to a specific niche in the field that they’re operating in.
Who is an Entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is a risk-taker who would rather run a small business and accepts all losses and profit in a given business venture than work as an employee.
In recent years the idea of entrepreneurship has been widely propagated in mainstream media, business schools, and across the internet as a way of creating incremental wealth. They try to show that starting and running a business will bring personal satisfaction.
What you need to know is that entrepreneurs work outside of companies to bring products and services to market. They will need to hire employees who will help run the business. It takes hard work and dedication to start and own a new business. Your leadership skills will be tested at all times.
Entrepreneurs have more responsibility than anyone else within a given organization because these individuals tend not only to be responsible for tasks on behalf of themselves but also those that may affect other sections as well- making them crucial for any successful initiative!
Entrepreneurs Summarized:
- Working in isolation or with few partners
- Investment of one’s own money in exchange for equity in the business
- No guarantee of success or salary while building the business
Who is an Intrapreneur?
Intrapreneurs are hired by Entrepreneurs and they use their entrepreneurial skills to initiate a project or launch a service within their existing organization as employees. In other words: An intrapreneur is any person within an organization or company that applies their entrepreneurial skills to achieve a specific goal.
An intrapreneur works inside of an already established company to create new opportunities or innovate existing ones by taking advantage of their unique resources in order to help the company grow.
A successful intrapreneur will take risks to experiment with new product ideas. Many organizations have intrapreneurs working for them today whether they are acting on their own or in collaboration with co-workers.
the role of Intrapreneurs is crucial and challenging thus prompting large organizations to hire intrapreneurs to bring competitive advantage. intrapreneurs are always rewarded handsomely for their innovations and their work
Intrapreneurs Summarized:
- Work in a large company with established procedures and a hierarchical structure
- Earn a salary while working on new products that might or might not be well received
- Has an existing consumer base
Entrepreneurship Versus Intrapreneurship
To understand the difference between entrepreneur vs intrapreneur you need to check the following points that make them unique
An entrepreneur is:
Creative and Intuitive
An entrepreneur should be creative and have an eye for details. They need to launch a business that will be successful. They bear all the risks as the business is taking form. A creative or innovative Entrepreneur will regularly come with new and better ideas. They will know when to follow a venture and when to let it go.
Selfless
Entrepreneurs have to use what they’ve got, which often means using their own resources to build their own business. This can be anything from manpower and money to machinery or even just plain old networking!
Enjoys Prestige
An entrepreneur works in their newly established company with their own office space, name on the door, and big dreams since they own the business.
Enjoys Freedom
One of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur is that you can do anything. You have to be able to take risks and not always know what’s going on, This is because you have a team in place answerable for any shortcomings.
An intrapreneur is:
Innovative/ Imaginative
Intrapreneurs work towards an imaginative end goal while keeping the restorative environment in mind. They are mandated to come with solutions, and innovations to make goals come to pass.
Enjoys financial support
An intrapreneur does not care if a company has a large budget or team since their resources come directly from their company. they don’t need to worry about funding as their company will provide it.
Limited
Even though an intrapreneur is not restrained, they have to convince an entrepreneur and others that their new idea will bear moderate risk and will be profitable. The rewards an intrapreneur gets will not be as flashy as the rewards an entrepreneur gets.
An intrapreneur can not make independent decisions because he is part of an existing organization the company will be bearing all the risks.
An intrapreneur will not get complete credit for any success that may come as a result of their ideas and for helping in achieving a company’s business goals.
They don’t bear Risks
Intrapreneurs foster innovation but do not bear any risk. Intrapreneurs are usually given full control of a project but it is the company that bears any risk that may come as a result of the innovations
Shared Traits Between Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur
We have seen some key differences between the two, what about similarities. ell below are some similarities between the two:
Motivation
There are many similarities between the two. One is their source of motivation. An entrepreneur benefits by bringing a product or service to market has the potential for the greatest reward.
They are often driven by this possibility and act with an individualistic mindset that will remain even after they develop successful companies.
Intrapreneurs, on the other hand, enjoy job security, and when they regularly develop and bring new ideas, Successful intrapreneurs get rewarded.
Both an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur have to show effective leadership skills to the rest of the team to successfully bring positive results to a company. They should have high emotional intelligence, motivating to the team, and offer positive feedback to team members,
In any existing organization, both the intrapreneur and the entrepreneur should display entrepreneurial spirit for both a startup company or any business to prosper.
Intuitive
Both the entrepreneur and the intrapreneur recognize mistakes and failure and take new innovative efforts and decisions.
As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. However, both entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship can be viable options depending on the individual’s circumstances. If you’re interested in starting your own business but unsure if now is the right time, listed below are some alternative ways to pursue an entrepreneurial career.
If you aren’t sure whether entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship is the right path for you, try both and see how it goes. In either case, remember that no one ever said starting a business would be easy.
Examples of Achievements Between Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs
If you are an entrepreneur you need to get others on board. Your approach, management, emotional intelligence, and your leadership skills should be top-notch.
You need to offer positive feedback, motivation, creativity, and communication to your employees, and in this case, the intrapreneur will help your company prosper. You also have to adapt to having an intrapreneur in your company. Adaptability is a critical element that will make your business successful.
There are many famous examples of entrepreneurs who made major strides with their forward-thinking abilities in the business world. Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur who for intrapreneurs to work independently to develop the Mac computer which became a success and was profitable.
Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page introduced their 20% Project that had employees spend 20% of their time to create or work on something they felt would benefit Google. The employees (intrapreneurs) started bringing in ideas like Gmail, Adwords, Google News, and many others.
How To Become a Better Intrapreneur or Entrepreneur
When you want your new business to pick up and make profits, you should be willing to learn and come up with new ideas and implement them. there shouldn’t be an entrepreneur vs intrapreneur competition. but rather the two should work together for the betterment of the company.
Both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs should learn that even the best strategies encounter problems. To garner success, both need to work together to find lasting solutions.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurs bear financial, psychological, and social risks to provide employment to others. They gain personal satisfaction and increase national wealth.
The debate between entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship comes down to a different outlook on how an organization should be structured. Important point: that entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs must work side by side and not against each other.
It is so easy for a new idea to be thrown into the void without any type of organization, structure, or perhaps funding. This is why an entrepreneur and a designer working side by side on an innovation project will not only share ideas, but will also collaborate, innovate, and make strategic decisions together.
The advent of the internet and social media has made this kind of collaboration even easier, which is why an innovation firm, or entrepreneurship versus entrepreneurship firm, needs to study the way innovative minds think and collaborate.