Spotting and Backing Intrapreneurs

Businesses need intrapreneurs. Business leaders, however, often find it difficult to spot them, create the space for them to thrive, and manage them. Curiosity and creative independent thinking are central to the intrapreneurial mindset. A 2024 HBR/Canva study found that “96% of survey respondents agree creative ideas are essential to an organization’s long-term success and performance,” and yet only “22% say their organization is ‘very successful’ at identifying creative solutions to business problems.”

A recent article from behavioural neuroscientist and psychologist, Dr Lynda Shaw, offers a valuable response to this evident mismatch between need and achievement. Her main call is for business leaders to trust intrapreneurs, to empower them to make decisions, and to create an environment that is flexible and supportive—albeit with clearly defined goals and rewards—and to avoid micro-management.

The following insights are direct extracts from Dr Shaw’s article:

 The psychology of an intrapreneur

We used to believe that individuals were born with enterprising, risk-taking skills, but we now know that these skills can be learnt. The brains of intrapreneurs are unlikely to be structurally different, but their psychology is likely to be. Their parasympathetic nervous system is often activated meaning they are calm and alert and alpha brain waves are being produced. Their ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitters may be a bit more active as they look for opportunities and solutions using their growth mindset.

Intrapreneurs like to operate in a more relaxed space and to have an element of play and curiosity. They enjoy freedom and autonomy. If they are staring out of the windows let them. They need a chance to play around with ideas. Their mindset, beliefs, attitude, and thinking processes, can help determine outcomes. 

Intrapreneurs may be more cautious about financial risk than entrepreneurs so having the boundaries and safety of an organization gives them the freedom to fly, be innovative, see the bigger picture, adapt quickly, and unlock their hidden potential.

How can you spot a true intrapreneur?

If you are chatting to one, they are often the ones who come up with ideas. They come into their own when issues crop up in the organization; you can almost see them rolling up their sleeves. They are rarely reactive or magnify the negatives, instead they look for solutions independently. Sometimes they are lone wolves but often they just need some space to develop their ideas. They like to be part of a team. They want to experiment whilst knowing and accepting that some ideas might fail. They can sometimes be a little quieter as individuals, but that is because they are deep-thinking and churning over ideas. They think differently and don’t see parameters as much as others. 

They are less worried about their ego yet have passion, vision, ambition, and clarity of their role and value mission and purpose. They tend to be mindful of others and how their ideas might impact them. They want to make a difference for good and want to belong. They have high levels of emotional intelligence and are self-motivated. They have a good attitude to work although may be prone to working too hard.

How to support an intrapreneur.

It takes specific management skills to handle an intrapreneur and the organization’s leadership and culture must be good. Intrapreneurs want to bring up ideas without fear of judgment and need to feel safe enough to fail at times and supported to be creative. The culture of the organization must be good enough to allow failure to be part of innovating and to stop jealousy in the ranks from the rest of the team. They need freedom, not a requirement to clock in and out. Stifling them means they will leave. Instead, they need the ability to present their ideas to get investment and funding and to bring people on board. Give them the resources they need to progress their ideas.

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Dr Lynda Shaw is a cognitive neuroscientist and chartered psychologist, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association. She works with business leaders and their teams to improve performance for real development and growth, to invigorate communication skills, to strengthen internal team relationships and to bolster external business relationships.