22 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company
adhesives for use in the aerospace industry in building planes. Instead of a
super-strong adhesive, though, he accidentally created an incredibly weak,
pressure-sensitive adhesive agent called Acrylate Copolymer Microspheres.
This adhesive did not interest 3M management, as it was seen as too
weak to be useful, but nonetheless had two interesting features. First, when
stuck to a surface, the adhesive could be peeled away without leaving any
residue. Specically, acrylic spheres only stick well to surfaces where they
are tangent to the surface, thus allowing weak adhesion to be peeled easily.
Second, the adhesive is re-usable, thanks to the spheres’ incredible strength
and resistance to breaking, dissolving, or melting. Despite these notable fea-
tures, no one, not even Silver himself, could devise a good marketable use.
Thus, even with Silver’s promotion to various 3M employees for 5 years, the
adhesive was shelved.
Finally, in 1973, when Geoff Nicholson was named 3M’s Products
Laboratory Manager, Silver approached him immediately with the adhesive
and provided samples to play with. Silver also suggested his best idea for
adhesive: a bulletin board with the adhesive sprayed on. One could then
stick pieces of paper to the bulletin board without tacks, tape, or the like;
the paper subsequently could be easily removed without any residue left
on the sheets. While a decent idea, the sticky bulletin board was not seen
by Nicholson as sufciently protable, principally because annual bulletin
board sales are low.
Enter the second accident, this one courtesy of chemical engineer
Arthur Fry. Fry was a 3M Product Development Engineer, and was famil-
iar with Silver’s adhesive thanks to attending one of Silver’s seminars.
Fry sung in a church choir in St. Paul, Minnesota, and while he sang, the
page marker kept falling out of the hymnal. Fry eventually had a stroke of
genius—he used Silver’s adhesive to keep the slips of paper in the hymnal.
Fry then suggested to Nicholson and Silver that they were using the adhe-
sive backwards. That is, instead of sticking the adhesive to the bulletin
board, they should “put it on a piece of paper and then we can stick it to
anything,” Fry exclaimed.
Doing so proved easier said than done, in terms of practical application.
Although it was easy enough to get the adhesive onto the paper, the adhe-
sive would often detach from the paper and stay on the object the paper
was stuck to. Silver’s bulletin boards did not suffer from the problem as he
fabricated the boards to bond better with the board than with the paper.
Two other 3M employees now entered the scene: Roger Merrill and Henry
Courtney. Merrill and Courtney were tasked with devising a coating that
Intrapreneurship: Corporate Entrepreneurship ◾ 23
would remain on the paper and not on whatever the paper was stuck to
when the paper was removed; the two engineers ultimately succeeded.
Nonetheless, since 3M’s management still did not think the product would
be commercially successful, the idea was more or less shelved for three
years; ironically, Post-it
®
Notes were extremely popular internally at 3M labs
during that time. Finally, in 1977, 3M began running test sales of the Post-it
®
Note in four cities; at that time, it was called “Press ‘n Peel.” The test sales
were again disappointing, which conrmed in the executives’ views that the
product was not commercially viable.
Fortunately for ofces the world over, Nicholson and Joe Ramey,
Nicholson’s boss, didn’t give up; they felt the marketing department had
dropped the ball, as businesses and individuals were not provided a suf-
cient number of samples to see for themselves how useful the notes
could be. A year after the initial op, 3M introduced the Post-it
®
Note to
the world, providing a huge number of free samples in Boise, Idaho, in
a marketing campaign labeled “The Boise Blitz.” This time, the re-order
rate went from almost nil in the previous attempt to 90% of the people
and businesses that had received the free samples. For reference, a 90%
re-order rate was double the best initial rate 3M had ever achieved for any
other product introduction. Two years later, the Post-it
®
Note was marketed
throughout the U.S.
Thus, after 5 years of rejection and another 7 years in development and ini-
tial marketing failures, Sliver and 3M nally had a hit in Post-it
®
Notes, which
have since become a mainstay in ofces the world over. In fact, Post-it
®
Notes
remains one of the top ve selling ofce supply products in the world,
7, 8
and
25 years later, Post-it
®
Notes is still one of 3M’s top-grossing products.
Over the years, 3M has had a policy that at least 25% of its revenue
should come from products introduced within the last 5 years. That encour-
ages a culture of innovation and intrapreneurship.
Table2.2 summarizes 3M’s rules for innovators.
Large companies may encourage intrapreneurship by:
◾ providing encouragement to innovators
◾ tolerating failures
◾ reducing the need for periodic explanations
◾ circumventing procedures, red tape, and micromanaging
◾ targeting real market needs
◾ providing “innovation time” to research, discuss, and execute projects
◾ rewarding successful intrapreneurs in ways visible to all employees
24 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company
Table2.3 presents some important strategies that encourage an intrapre-
neurial activity.
2.4 Characteristics of Intrapreneurs
Only one animal in the world is willing to endure peer ridicule, work
pro bono, and face continual rejection and prolonged mental anguish
in the hope of making a great contribution to his or her company: the
Table2.2 3M’s Rules for “Bootlegging”
• Don’t kill a project
• Tolerate failure
• Keep divisions small
• Motivate the champions
• Stay close to the customer
• Share the wealth
Table2.3 Strategies that Encourage Intrapreneurial Activity
Support idea generation. Grant
project ownership.
“Make intrapreneurial heroes out of
managerial robots.”
Make risk-taking and failure non-fatal. “Failure is a station on the way to success.”
Train employees on creating and
selling innovation.
“Intrapreneurs are managers of
managers.”
Celebrate and reward intrapreneurial
behavior.
“To be a realist you must be a dreamer.”
Encourage networking and
collaboration.
“Peer recognition is more important than
salary, bonuses, or promotions.”
Provide access to data and business
intelligence.
“Keep your friends close, and your
enemies even closer.”
Contain the stiing bureaucracy. “Size is the enemy of innovation.”
Create a common fund for
intrapreneurial initiatives.
“Raising cheap money is very expensive.”
Modied after “10 tips for turning employees into ‘intrapreneurs,’” SmartPlanet http://
www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/10-tips-for-turning-employ-
ees-into-intrapreneurs/, accessed March 2013.
Intrapreneurship: Corporate Entrepreneurship ◾ 25
“intrapreneur.” Intrapreneurs are pioneers with full knowledge that “pioneers
have all the tomahawks in their backs.”
Table 2.4 summarizes important characteristics of intrapreneurs.
9
Corporate entrepreneurship is a constellation of processes utilized by
existing large organizations to create new business opportunities. Individuals
who perform these services are known as corporate entrepreneurs, intra-
corporate entrepreneurs, or intrapreneurs. In this chapter, we will refer to
corporate entrepreneurs, intra-corporate entrepreneurs, or intrapreneurs
interchangeably.
2.5 External and Internal Business Environment
The business environment is the totality of factors affecting an ongoing busi-
ness, consisting of the external and internal environments. The external
environment encompasses competitive trends, government regulations, and
economic factors, whereas the internal environment relates to all organizational
activities under the direct control of the business, as summarized in Figure2.1.
◾ Economic factors: overall health and vitality of the economic environ-
ment in which the organization operates
◾ Technological factors: proprietary techniques to convert resources into
valuable products or services
Table2.4 Recognized Characteristics of Intrapreneurs
“Lions don’t need to roar.”
• Goal oriented, impactful, focused
• Ambitious, brilliant
• Competitive, activist for change
• Questioning, deant, ready to do battle
• Self motivated, inspiring
• Spurns bureaucracy, rebellious
• Comfortable with change, determined
• Adept at internal politics
• Good at conict resolution
• Able to lead others
26 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company
◾ Regulations: all governmental and trade constraints imposed upon the
business
◾ Financial resources: monetary funds available to a business for spending
in the form of cash, liquid securities, and credit lines
◾ Managerial resources: portfolio of capabilities and strategies to create
maximum value for the organization
◾ Organizational culture: constellation of values, beliefs, behaviors, cus-
toms, attitudes, and history that guides members to understand what is
expected and what the organization considers important (“How we do
things around here.”)
Business environments are constantly changing, and a business capac-
ity to adapt, to innovate, and to respond to competitive pressures may be
directly impacted by intrapreneurs. If given the chance, intrapreneurs can
lower production costs, improve quality, create new products, and open new
markets; but to do so, large companies need to establish the right culture,
which will be explored in detail in the next section.
2.6 Culture Regarding Innovation
Innovation is taking a creative idea and providing benets to the user.
Innovation is an elusive activity and a never-ending task, especially because
strategic objectives are constantly changing. Intrapreneurs can openly
Business Environments
Environment
External
Internal
Factors
Economic
Technological
Competitive
Regulations
Domestic
International
Resources
Financial
Managerial
Culture
Encourages innovation
Rigid, hierarchical
Figure 2.1 Business environments—Intrapreneurs should consider both external and
internal factors likely to affect their proposed business.
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