Word: intrapreneurship
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Dates: during 1985-1985
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Smith views Saturn, which was formally unveiled last January, as a showcase of automotive innovation. The car, which will be built by a newly created company, is a leading example of "intrapreneurship" -- the practice by which large firms give employees freedom and financial backing to pursue their ideas. Declares Smith: "We expect to achieve tremendous efficiencies in Saturn through the use of leading-edge technologies and new business and management systems so advanced they don't exist anywhere in the world, not even in Japan." The four-cylinder car will be built in preassembled sections on highly automated lines...
General Motors is not the only major corporation to adopt intrapreneurship. Data General, DuPont, Texas Instruments and AT&T are all trying to nurture intrapreneurs. Even smaller companies are trying to catch the spirit. At W.L. Gore & Associates, a privately held firm in Delaware founded by the husband- and-wife team of Wilbert and Genevieve Gore, the employees, or "associates" as they are called, are grouped into teams of no more than 150 to 200 people to encourage new and different ideas and products. One such team developed GORE-TEX, a line of insulating fabrics used in space suits, tents...
Some firms trying intrapreneurship...
Pinchot's thesis is stirring discussion within management circles. Peter Drucker, 75, author of more than a dozen books, says that intrapreneurship is really just a new name for an old idea. Says he: "These young people have no memory. It is like every 19-year-old thinking he has just discovered sex." Thomas J. Peters, co-author of the best-selling In Search of Excellence, believes Pinchot is on to something. Says he: "People ought to think about this intensely...
...venture capitalist in Englewood, Colo.: "Even the best of organizations cannot keep its management's finger out of the pie." The new style involves a radical departure from corporate policies based on control from the top, layers of reporting and analysis, and an intolerance of failure. As a result, & intrapreneurship seems to work best in companies like 3M that have a long tradition of encouraging employees to be independent and innovative by working in small groups. Says Wilbert Gore: "I don't know how one can take an authoritarian style of management and make it intrapreneurial...