CHAPTER 7

Essential Skills of Intrapreneurs

You have your culture and infrastructure ready. You might even have received a couple of good ideas from your employees. You and your leadership team have excitedly sponsored some of them, hoping they would drive future businesses. But three months have gone by, and nothing much has happened. Then six months in, your employees tell you they’re still at the initial stage, just clarifying the details. A year later, nothing has been launched. You are, quite rightly, wondering what went wrong. And the answer is usually quite simple: your employees may be passionate but they’re not equipped to be intrapreneurs just yet.

If you are looking to groom intrapreneurial talents, use this chapter as a guide to developing your people. Learn the basic concepts of the required skills and understand how they will help your organization innovate. Evaluate your list of potential intrapreneurs, which you identified in Chapter 3, against the list of skills in this chapter. See where the gaps are and explore how you can help your intrapreneurs acquire those skills. You can also use this chapter to review whether or not you have the skills to innovate for your organization. See which skills are new to you and how you can upskill to lead the organization by example.

The breadth and depth of skills required by employees vary over time. Traditionally in large corporations, employees specialize in one domain and work on a set of predefined tasks throughout their careers. The early twentieth-century work system was designed to maximize productivity. It made employees experts in a particular area and little beyond that. This group of employees is called the “I-shaped talents,” with the vertical part of the letter “I” representing their depth of domain expertise. In an article published in Harvard Business Review in 2001, Hansen and Oetinger introduced the T-shaped manager.¹ This is a new kind of executive who breaks out of the traditional corporate hierarchy to share knowledge freely across the organization (the horizontal part of the T) while remaining fiercely committed to individual business unit performance (the vertical part).

In 2013, Tom Wessel, author at SolutionsIQ, suggested that as the team matures, the next evolution is Pi-shaped. According to Wessel, Pi-shaped makes an excellent metaphor for truly adaptive team members. Rather than one area of expertise, a Pi-shaped team member possesses two. But now, with rapid technological advancement and the changing market landscape in the era of Industry 5.0, it is time to move on from Pi-shaped talent. Dr. Esin Akay refers to comb-shaped talents—employees whose skills are broad but with multiple areas of expertise in the shape of a comb.² These multiple expertise areas might never be deep enough as the knowledge of a truly deep specialist is only in one area. However, this is not a disadvantage considering the interconnected and interdependent world that we live in. Comb-shaped talents are agile, lifelong learners and they collaborate with others by having sufficient depth in several domains. Figure 7.1 illustrates how the I-, T-, Pi-, and comb-shaped talents are different in terms of breath and depth of knowledge.

To become intrapreneurs, employees need to develop themselves as comb-shaped talents. In terms of depth, they need to adapt and swiftly learn domain expertise based on the ideas that they are working on. In terms of breadth, they should develop broad business knowledge to enhance how they lead the team to commercialize the idea. Comb-shaped talents truly differentiate themselves by their ability to learn fast and adapt to various settings.

Being intrapreneurial starts with one’s mindset but mindset alone is not sufficient for coming up with a great idea and making that idea a reality in a large organization. In the rest of this chapter, we will talk about the various skills an intrapreneur needs to master. Depending on the domain areas that you are innovating in, the subject matter will differ. For example, if you are working for a logistics company and looking into ideas for automated goods tracking, an intrapreneur might need IoT device knowledge. Those in the banking industry exploring instant, cross-border payments might need to study blockchain technology. What you need to learn in the form of vertical expertise depends on your field, the current applications, and the relevant technology trends.

Figure 7.1 I-, T-, Pi-, and comb-shaped talents

That said, there are fundamental skills that every intrapreneur should develop, which apply across industries and domains. There are four broad categories of essential skills:

1. Disciplined innovation process. A set of skills and methodologies that you need to acquire and learn to identify problems, come up with ideas, and validate and convert ideas into a profitable business. It also includes skills that help you build a bridge between an idea and the actual launch. It helps you organize the project in a structured manner so you and your team have a clear path of execution.

2. Leadership. Skills that you need to inspire, lead without authority, motivate, and collaborate with other people inside and outside of your corporation.

3. Navigating the organization. Skills that you need to navigate a large organization and convince the stakeholders to move your idea forward.

4. Communications. Skills that you need to effectively communicate your ideas with other people.

Figure 7.2 summarizes the essential skills that an intrapreneur needs to master.

Figure 7.2 Four skills that intrapreneurs need to master

In the rest of this chapter, I present the methodologies and tools published by innovation pioneers, my own experience of using them, and how others have used them. An experienced intrapreneur should choose the tools based on the situation, adjust the framework to fit the purpose, and understand what works for the people in their corporation. For further reading about each of these skills, consult the recommended resources in each section.

Disciplined Innovation Process

While creativity requires freedom to grow, innovation requires discipline. Amateurs come up with ideas occasionally, like accidental thoughts. But innovation practitioners who generate numerous ideas rely on disciplined innovation methodologies to spark continuous inspiration. Learn the following innovation methodologies to understand how to generate unlimited ideas, evaluate whether those ideas are good enough, and break down big ideas into new launches.

First, let’s look at the cycles involved in delivering an innovative product. Three innovation methodologies guide you through the cycle, from understanding the problem to launching and scaling a product. The innovation methodologies are:

1. Problem-solving using design thinking

2. Launching minimum viable product (MVP) using lean startup

3. Scaling the product using agile

Each methodology addresses different objectives using different tools and techniques. There are also overlapping areas of these methodologies. Combining these innovation methodologies provides a structured framework for you to execute your ideas. Figure 7.3 is a diagram that shows how a combination of design thinking, lean startup, and agile can work together. This figure helps visualize what the cycle of innovation looks like when design thinking and lean startup methodology are combined.

Figure 7.3 Cycle of innovation combining design thinking and lean startup

The execution of innovation projects is often not linear, with one stage ending and another phase starting without overlapping. So corporations should not segregate the phases to be carried out by entirely different teams and design collaboration only at the touchpoints of different phases. The use of different methodologies and activities should be viewed as a continuous and iterative process.

Problem Solving by Design Thinking

Most people know design from graphic design or packaging design, which relates to the appearance of a product. It’s not surprising as these are visual and relatable; we can see and touch the design. Design thinking is something different. It is a process of customer-centric creative problem solving.

People who’ve gone through education and become industrial designers, user experience designers, or user interface designers often practice design thinking. But you do not necessarily need to be trained as a designer. It doesn’t matter whether or not you can sketch, use design software, or speak design language because design thinking is a problem-solving skill. I’ll discuss the approach and the process but it’s just as important to practice it hands-on by applying it to real problems.

The best way to avoid this problem is with the following four-step process: empathize, define, ideate, and validate.

Empathize

Empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, to see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. It is you putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they must be feeling.³ It’s a powerful ability that allows you to connect with different people, even though you might not come from the same background or have not experienced exactly what they have been through. Empathize guides problem solving by first understanding the customer. According to “The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design” by IDEO,⁴ empathy is a “deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people you are designing for.”

Empathize is an important stage that facilitates subsequent ideation of good product design. Emi Kolawole, editor-in-residence of Stanford University d.school, said, “I can’t come up with any new ideas if all I do is exist in my own life.”⁵

Depending on the problem you are trying to solve, the first step is to visualize your customers’ attitudes and behaviors, bringing them to life on an empathy map. An empathy map allows you and your team to articulate and form a common ground of understanding with customers to discover their needs. Figure 7.4 is a template of an empathy map.

Figure 7.4 Empathy map

Here’s a step-by-step guide to completing the empathy map:

1. Customer. Profile your customer by giving them a name, age, job, and lifestyle. Build a comprehensive profile by giving more details. The best approach is to profile a real customer that you have dealt with.

2. Goal. What is your customer’s goal? Think of the bigger picture beyond the immediate problem that you are solving. Is the customer thinking about their next promotion, achieving financial freedom, work–life balance, or retirement? This helps you visualize how solving the problem aligns with their prioritized goals.

3. Says. Quote what the customer says during their daily life or your interaction with them. What words does the customer use to describe their problem?

4. Thinks. Capture what the customer is thinking. What is on their mind? What matters to them? What are they thinking but are reluctant to say? Discover why they are hesitant to unveil their real thoughts.

5. Does. What action does the customer take? How did they try to solve it in the past? What alternatives have they tried?

6. Feels. What is the emotional status of the customer? How do they feel about this problem? Are they worried, concerned, excited, or annoyed?

An empathy map is something you can kickstart anytime since it is an early-stage exercise. There are various sources of information that you can bring into it. The team can collectively profile customers by:

• Past customer interaction. If you have direct interaction with customers, you can refer to your experience with them. Quote what they have told you or what you have observed in the past about the issue.

• Sales input. If you do not have direct access to customers, go to a salesperson who owns the customer relationship and seek their help to provide insights. Tell the salesperson that you are working on solving a problem for the customer and will require their help to crystalize the need. Try not to lead the conversation into a discussion of solutions as this is too early.

• Customer service data. Data can be a good tool as they present an unbiased view of what the problem is. You can see how the customer deals with the problem. How many calls or complaints did your company get that are relevant to the problem? What did the customer say when they made the call? Were they emotional about the issue?

• Interview a customer. This is a good source but it needs to be managed with care. It depends on the relationship you have with the customer. If the customer is very open and welcoming, by all means, do it. But if you are not directly handling the relationship or the customer does not have a particularly warm relationship with you, start with your internal resources instead of talking to them. At this stage, since you do not have much to offer in terms of problem definition or solution, the customer could be confused about why you need a conversation.

When you do talk to customers to understand how they view the problem, it is important to differentiate what they say they want versus what they actually need. For that reason, the technique of asking the “5 Whys” can be helpful. The “5 Whys” was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda and was used within the Toyota Motor Corporation during the evolution of its manufacturing methodologies. It was a critical component of problem-solving training, delivered as part of the induction into the Toyota Production System. Taiichi Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System, said that the basis of the approach was to ask “why?” five times whenever we find a problem. By repeating “why?” five times, the nature of the problem, as well as its solution, becomes clear.⁶ In the context of design thinking, the “5 Whys” are applied similarly but the Whys are asked in such a way as to discover the root desire of the customer.

You should focus on the customer first and not the idea. In fact, this is a common mistake. People are obsessed with ideas that will change the world, and immediately they start thinking about how to make them happen. But once they jump ahead to focus on the solution, they never go back to understand the actual problem or what the customer really wants. Skipping the empathize phase can quickly lead to failure if the final solution can’t help the customer. Or you might end up with a quick fix, catering to a superficial problem but not the customer’s real need. This could make the product weak and you would lose the opportunity to address the problem with a game-changer.

Define

With the insights gathered from the empathize phase, you have sufficient information to proceed to the define phase. Define is a phase in which you synthesize all the information you gathered in the empathize phase. The target outcome is to have a clearly defined and actionable problem statement.

A problem statement defines the unmet need of a customer. The insights you synthesized from the empathy map, and also the “5 Whys,” should be considered when you frame the problem statement. Later on, when you brainstorm solutions in the ideation stage, the solutions should always point to solving the problem you have defined. A clearly defined problem statement keeps the team focused and provides a clear goal and objective.

The format of a problem statement is as follows:

As (the customer), when I (in a scenario/conducting the job to be done), I would like to have (ideal experience), so that I can (achieve my primary goal).

When you form the problem statement, you need to examine it and see whether it fits the following criteria to make it a good problem statement for the subsequent innovation phase.

1. Does it identify the customer? Is there any description of the customer that you are targeting? Are they young graduates? Are they owners of small businesses? Are they working couples with children? Make sure you describe the customer who is experiencing the problem.

2. Does it focus on the need of the customer? The customer’s perspective always comes first under the design thinking methodology. The problem statement should focus on describing the customer’s goal and need, instead of those of your corporation. Try to avoid having your corporation’s perspective in it. For example, a good problem statement should contain wording like “Working couples with children (customers) need a convenient way to prepare for meals so that they can spend more quality time together” instead of “Our company needs to design a convenient way of preparing meals for working couples with children so that we can capture market share and make more profit.”

3. Is it sufficiently broad? Is the scope of the problem broad enough to explore solutions? There is usually more than one way you can solve a problem. The problem statement should not point to one, and only one, solution. It should also not contain a description of the solution itself. However, the problem should not be so broad it has no focus. It is impossible to solve all of the world’s issues using a single problem statement. Try not to include too many problems of different causes.

It’s important to validate the problem statement and pain point. Validation is an important gatekeeping exercise in the design thinking process. Before you proceed to explore the solution, you need to validate whether the problem you have identified is something the customer really wants to be solved. The problem statement you have crafted and the visual presentation of how it works currently is good artifact to start with. Create a simple discussion guide to facilitate the conversation with your customer, building on the information you already have. A simple discussion guide can include questions like:

1. From our research, we have identified the [problem statement]. How do you relate to this statement?

2. Can you walk us through the process the last time you performed this task? How did you feel?

3. From the study, we believe there are some pain points involved. [Visualize the pain points in the as-is scenario.] Which pain point do you relate to?

4. Is there any other pain point that we have missed? Can you describe it?

5. Which pain point(s) is/are the most pressing?

6. How would solving these pain points make you feel?

From the discussion with an engaged customer, you should have sufficient information to validate the problem statement. The bottom line is that your subsequent work should be based on a problem that the customer recognizes as an actual problem, one with enough pain that they want it to be solved now, if not yesterday.

Ideate

After you have framed and validated the problem statement, it is time to move on to the ideation phase. You will now brainstorm solutions that can solve the problem that’s been defined. Ideation is probably the most exciting part of the design thinking process. It is the stage to set your mind free and explore as many ideas as possible before you land on any. Ideation works better as a group exercise so I would strongly suggest that you form your team (refer to Chapter 8, “Diversity as Multipliers”) or seek relevant stakeholders or allies to brainstorm together. The more ideas you can gather during this stage, the better the results could be. The quantity of ideas matters at the early stage of ideation as you want to capture diverse thinking.

To shift the mindset of the team from focusing on problems, you can make the transition by forming a “How might we…?” statement. A “How might we…” statement looks something like this: “How might we design a solution that can [achieve the goal of the customer described under the problem statement]?”

If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

—Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company

Some people mistake design thinking as hearing what the customer says and providing them with what they asked for. It is, in fact, much deeper than that. The best solution might not be what the client has explicitly asked for or could have imagined. The perfect solution most likely has not yet appeared on the market, since you are still trying to solve the problem. Do not limit yourself only to solutions that you have heard from customers or what other companies are doing. Encourage weird or wild ideas during brainstorming. Do not criticize any idea at this stage. But at the same time, you need to stay away from groupthink at the beginning of the ideation phase. Based on my experience, a good way to arrange ideation without groupthink is as follows:

1. Form a diverse brainstorming group. Gather people of diverse backgrounds and domains in a room for ideation. Try to not have more than half of the people from the same domain. Get everyone in sync on the problem the team is brainstorming. Given them sufficient background in the way of insights drawn from the empathize phase. Provide everyone with the problem statement and the “How might we?” statement.

2. Start with individual brainstorming in silence. Set a time-bound individual exercise during which each person needs to come up with at least five ideas on their own. There should not be any upper limit on the number of ideas. Everyone has to work silently and no conversation among group members is allowed at this stage.

3. Share. Each member takes turns and shares their five ideas. The objective is to allow other members to understand the high-level concept of the solution, not the details. Set a time limit for each team member, for example, five minutes. Ensure everyone has a chance to go through all their ideas. Be open to listening to others’ ideas and try not to interrupt any sharing, debate whether the idea works, or attempt to change anyone’s idea.

4. Synthesize. On a whiteboard, group all similar or relevant ideas together until you have different clusters of ideas. Name each cluster using a broad solution name. Now the group should have several concepts for broad solutions.

Now that you have those broad-solution concepts, you need to prioritize the solutions to be explored, since you cannot act on all ideas at once with finite resources. When considering which idea to prioritize, you can use the idea prioritization matrix. In the matrix, one axis should be the impact on customers and the other should be the impact on your corporation. Finding the right solution to solve the customer problem is the main objective, but it would be meaningless if it does not benefit your corporation at all. Once you have the matrix up, allow the group to discuss what they think of each idea. Place the idea concepts onto the matrix to visualize where they sit. Figure 7.5 shows a two-by-two matrix that guides leaders and intrapreneurs to prioritize the ideas.

Validate the Idea

Once you have prioritized an idea, you should proceed to validate it. The idea is still very much a concept at this stage and there is no guarantee that it will work. Certainly, there is no way your corporation would write a half-million-dollar check to invest in an idea based on a high-level concept. To build credibility, you need to validate it from different perspectives by considering three aspects: desirability, feasibility, and viability. A good idea should fulfill all three aspects. Passing it through the lens of validation, you should be able to tell whether a product is wanted by the customer, whether it can be built, and whether it makes commercial sense.

Figure 7.5 Idea prioritization matrix

Desirability, feasibility, and viability are common validations required for any entrepreneur who is launching a new business. However, intrapreneurship demands more. Since intrapreneurs are innovating within a corporate context, corporate strategy and proprietary assets also need to be considered. Let’s go into all of these in more detail. Figure 7.6 shows the sweet spot of a good intrapreneurship idea.

Desirability: Is your idea what your customers desire?

During the empathize phase, you validated the problem. Now you should validate whether the solution you propose is what the customer wants. Usually from the customer’s perspective, it is a question of whether your solution solves the right pain points. A good validation approach is to build a low-fidelity prototype from your idea to share with customers and ask for their feedback. The beauty of a low-fidelity prototype is that it is cheap and fast to make and it can take any form as long as it helps to illustrate your idea. It could be a flow chat, concept presentation, mockup model, wireframes, or some sketched-out screenshots. Plan a discussion guide with a list of questions you want to validate with the customer. Stay open and do not force the solution onto them. Let them tell you what they think works or does not work. Ask the customer whether they consider your solution to be a painkiller that addresses their biggest pain or just a vitamin that eases the issue.

Figure 7.6 Validating an intrapreneurship idea

Feasibility: Is your idea concept possible to achieve?

You can have the most perfect idea and yet it is meaningless if the idea cannot be achieved in the real world. A time machine is a good example! People want it so badly that it keeps appearing in movies and fiction. It is a perfect solution for any regret you have in life. But technology-wise, it just cannot be built. Humanity cannot yet bring the solution to life. So a good idea needs to be possible and work as promised. Are the capability and technology that the idea relies on mature enough, and do they even exist? To test whether the idea can be developed, conduct a proof of concept. Break down the important components of the idea, for example, front end, back end, logic, platform, and interface, and design experiments to test risky assumptions around those components.

Viability: Can you build a viable business model from the idea?

After you have validated that customers do want your idea and it is achievable, the next important question is whether you can make a commercial case. It does not matter how good your solution is if customers do not want to pay for it or if the price is not sufficient to cover the costs of building and maintaining it. Validating viability can be challenging when your solution does not exist today. But you can estimate what the solution is worth. One approach is to look into whether customers are already paying for this problem to be solved. If there are alternative solutions in the market today, check out their cost. See how they compare with your idea. Hopefully, your idea is better than the existing ones (and it should be) and you can use the price as a baseline and charge a premium. However, this baseline approach might not be for the best if your solution really offers a best-in-class experience. That is, it’s a true painkiller compared to all existing solutions. Benchmarking with those for pricing might not reflect its true value. Plus, if you are working on a problem with limited existing solutions, the benchmark might not be accurate. In that case, you can find out what it really costs your customers today for not solving the problem. How much time and effort are they spending? How many people do they hire to handle the current problem? These are more accurate factors that enable you to quantify the price your customers are paying.

Corporate alignment: Does your idea align with your corporate strategy?

As an intrapreneur, you are innovating within a corporation. Eventually, you hope that your idea will become a new product, a new solution, or even a new business for your corporation. Therefore, you should seek alignment with the corporate strategy. That would include the problem that you are working on, the customers you are targeting, and the ideas that you explore. Imagine if you are working in a food and beverage company that operates a fast-food chain as its sole business. But you discover a problem in the pharmaceutical industry that you are passionate about working on. Clearly, the target customers are entirely different from the fast-food customers. Your idea is to launch a new pharmaceutical business. I am not saying it’s absolutely impossible. But it would be rare for a food and beverage corporation to take such a big risk if it is not already in the strategic plan. So look at the strategic plan that your corporation has for the next three to five years and see where your idea might sit in that plan. It will help tremendously when you pitch the idea to management.

Proprietary assets: Does your idea leverage core institutional strengths?

Each corporation has its core strengths and proprietary assets, which are exhibited in its technological know-how, patents, operational model, branding, clientele, financials, partnerships, and so on. Does your idea build on the strengths and assets of your corporation? How much does it rely on existing strengths or does it require an entirely new build? It is more sensible to sponsor an idea that can be built using 80 percent of the existing corporate capability and build 20 percent new capability than the other way around. On the other hand, consider how your idea, when accomplished, brings new proprietary assets that complement existing assets. Ask yourself how your idea strengthens your corporation’s competitive advantage.

Launching MVP by Lean Startup

Now that you have an idea you believe can solve the problem, it’s time to put it into development. Some product ideas are huge and challenging to pull off. If your idea is big, there could be a lot of components you need to take care of. It is wonderful to imagine that your idea solves everything but we all know that, in reality, it cannot. And for you to execute the idea, you would not be able to deliver all the features in one go. It is simply impossible given the limited time and resources. If you choose to launch only when all the features are ready, you’ll end up delivering the product two years from now and the market demand will already have shifted.

The more sensible way is to think big and start small. You should plan to deliver a good-enough product in a quick turnaround time, hit the market, gather learnings, and revise your offering accordingly. To achieve that, you need to define your MVP, which includes a subset of all the features of your ultimate product. In his book The Lean Startup, Eric Ries defined the MVP as a “version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”⁸ A good example of MVP is LinkedIn. LinkedIn was first launched in May 2003. At that time, it had only the basic features of user profiles and a search function to help people find other users and send e-mail requests. Looking at the interface, it was nothing fancy.

If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.

—Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn

The purpose of the MVP is to:

• Build a good-enough product.

• Test your hypothesis and assumptions.

• Gather learnings from the market.

• Use the learnings to pivot.

• Help plan the next launch.

Even though the MVP is a good-enough version, it should NOT be:

• An incomplete product that does not serve its purpose

• A semifinished product

• A broken experience

As you can see in Figure 7.7, an MVP should offer some elements of functionality, usability, reliability, and a delightful experience. If an MVP has none of those things, you need to go back to the drawing board. The figure illustrates what an MVP is and is not.

Figure 7.7 What an MVP is and what it is not

How to Define Your MVP

To define your MVP, you can start by breaking down the big idea into components. Combined with the validation results you have obtained in the problem-solving phase, you should be able to prioritize the components of your MVP. Here is a four-step guide on how you can define your MVP:

1. Referring to your customer journey, what are your customer’s goals?

2. List their pain points by the level of pain.

3. Using 1 and 2 above as a reference and the 2×2 MVP features prior-itization matrix later, layout the proposed features based on the level of impact and urgency.

4. Prioritize the features.

Figure 7.8 provides a framework for intrapreneurs to prioritize features for an MVP.

MVP launch is not about building the perfect version but it should provide a good-enough solution that addresses the customer pain points. For backend operations, it might be challenging to have all functions fully developed and integrated for the first launch. As long as it is assembled in a way that the key functions are fulfilled and it does not jeopardize the customer experience, it is a go. Remember, you can always get feedback and pivot after you launch the MVP.

Figure 7.8 MVP features prioritization matrix

Agile Project Management

Intrapreneurs need to learn to manage the execution of ideas. In “Disciplined Innovation,” you gained insights into how to break down big ideas into activities. Next, you need to plan the activities and make progress to push the idea forward. You need to build momentum and execute swiftly. If you are lucky, you might have a partner who is a professional certified project manager on your team to implement the project management approach. If not, there are quick tools and hacks for learning and managing it by yourself.

Traditionally, large corporations use the “waterfall approach” to manage projects. Once the project scope is confirmed, the project manager lays out the tasks from start to finish and assigns owners to execute them. Most workflows are linear and sequential. The waterfall approach is appropriate for large-scale projects with well-defined requirements and expected outcomes of high certainty. Since it involves extensive planning with sequential execution, the room for change in scope is limited and flexibility is low.

For intrapreneurs developing a new solution who want to move quickly, other approaches are required. Agile project management, which breaks down big projects into smaller parts, is more suitable for managing innovation. Agile focuses on constant and frequent deliverables. There is a strong focus on execution via collaboration. You might know agile as an approach for software development but, in fact, it is a methodology and mindset that can be applied across different types of innovation projects. In this section, we will cover the common agile methods and tools that can help you move your project forward. By learning it, you can apply agile to manage the progress of your design thinking and MVP activities.

Moving With Speed Using Sprint

Agile makes progress using a Sprint approach. Sprint is a time-bounded period in which the team sets for themselves to deliver a defined scope of work. Instead of managing a project over six months with 100 tasks, Sprint sets a specific scope of work ranging from one to four weeks. During a Sprint, the team agrees on the key tasks for delivering the relevant results during that period. Once they have completed that particular Sprint, the team comes together to evaluate the outcomes, including what is done, what is not, and what they want to focus on in the upcoming Sprint.

The team can decide how long a Sprint should be. The typical practice is to start on a Monday and end on a Friday. If it is a two-week Sprint, it starts on a Monday and ends on Friday the following week, with a total of 10 workdays in between. Using a Sprint to manage tasks and progress keeps the team focused and provides clarity on the priority of tasks. It also builds momentum for the team since the milestones are set in the near term in a manner that’s achievable. It is not a good idea to have too long a sprint (anything beyond four weeks) as it’s supposed to be fast moving.

Scope-Setting Using Sprint

Scoping is the first step in a Sprint. You and your team need to define the tasks you are onto. To achieve the agreed scope, the team has to collectively determine:

• What is the goal of this Sprint? Validate some key assumptions, test the feasibility of some features, come up with a high-level business model, and so on.

• What are the tasks involved? Based on the goal, what activities do you need in this Sprint?

• What are the target deliverables of each task? Decide what outcomes the team wants to achieve at the end of the Sprint.

• Who can carry out the work? Which team members are available for this Sprint?

• Who should work on what? Based on the skills of the team members, who would lead and/or partner together to complete which task?

Scrum Meeting With Kanban Visual

Setting up regular touchpoints with the team during a Sprint is important as all team members should be aware of any progress and roadblocks. One of the most efficient ways to keep track of the project progress is to set up a 5 to 10 minute standup or scrum meeting with your team, either in-person or virtually. The meeting frequency depends on the maturity of the project, for example, once per week for an early-stage idea or daily for a project in flight. To facilitate the meeting, you can use a Kanban board.

Kanban was developed in the 1940s by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer and businessman working at Toyota Automotive. It was created as a planning system to control and manage work and inventory at every stage of production in an optimum manner.¹³ A Kanban system takes care of the entire value chain, from sourcing raw materials to manufacturing to delivering the goods to customers. Much later, in 2004, David J. Anderson, a veteran of the software industry, started to apply the Kanban method to the field of information systems and software development. Kanban has since been applied as a method of tracking progress in various types of projects, or basically anything for which you would like to see gradual progress. One of the most commonly used tools of the Kanban method is the Kanban board. I have been using the Kanban board to track project progress and, over time, I have found that the simplest version works the best and can be applied to various types of projects. Figure 7.10 is a template of the Kanban board.

Bring the Kanban board into the meeting to visualize progress. Each meeting should be run in a way that everyone gets the chance to share the following:

1. What have you done?

2. What are you doing?

Figure 7.10 Kanban board

3. What else do you plan to do?

4. Is there any roadblock that you face?

The primary objective of this standup meeting is to provide a quick update on team activities, not to deep-dive into any task. If there is a roadblock, the team should quickly identify items for action or escalation. Anything that cannot be resolved in this 10-minute meeting should be followed up in a separate setting with the appropriate stakeholders.

Map Your Internal Stakeholders

To strategize how to push an idea forward, you will need to think about the people in the organization who can support you, as well as those you need to spend the effort to convince if you anticipate pushback. Mapping your internal stakeholders helps you visualize the motivations of different people, their level of interest in your idea, and the role they play in your plan. Start mapping stakeholders right from the start of a project and review it periodically. This is not project material that you would show to your stakeholders. It is a confidential document only to be shared among a small number of core team members. Figure 7.11 is the template of the internal stakeholders map.¹⁵

Figure 7.11 Stakeholder map

Keep Track of Decisions

A decision log is equally important for managing a big project or an early-stage idea. During the process of exploration, observations and validations result in decisions on which path to pursue. Along the way, more stakeholders come to the table and, based on their feedback or input, the direction of your idea might have changed or been adjusted. You will need to keep track of all those changes and the rationale for the decisions. This is to avoid back and forth arguments or overlooking information after a couple of months when no one remembers what was said and why a particular decision was made. Intrapreneurs should get into good habits by tracking decisions when the idea is in the development phase. The minimum you should do is write up a short minutes document after each meeting, with clear decision points and contributors. These should be shared with everyone involved in the meeting and the project.

Figure 7.12 Decision log template

A recommended approach is to keep a decision log, a document that records all the critical decisions made throughout the exploration of the idea and the project. A well-maintained decision log will help to:

1. Eliminate ambiguity and misunderstanding about a decision.

2. Inform members who are not present in the meeting.

3. Save time recalling who said what and why.

A good decision log should include information describing the issue discussed, the decision made, the time it is made, who agreed to it, the rationale it is based on, and the relevant action item (Figure 7.12). It might only take you two minutes to keep track of each decision. You might find it tedious to diligently maintain such a log but, believe me, you will find it very handy when you need to refer to it.

Leadership

Leadership was very different 20 years ago. With digitalization, technology advancement, and the exponential growth of social media, businesses today are facing a rapid pace of change. Leadership skill requirements have also been evolving. A leader is no longer simply a person who has direct authority over others. In fact, what the world needs today is effective leadership that is more of a mentality than a title. Anyone can lead effectively, even without authority, if they have developed the right skills. Obviously, there are many important skills in the domain of leadership. This section will focus on those that intrapreneurs should develop to achieve success in bringing innovation to their organizations.

Lead by Influence, Not Authority

Leadership is a choice you make rather than a place you sit. In other words, leadership comes from influence and not from your position. For this reason, even when you’re not in front, you’re still leading those around you.

—John Maxwell

As an intrapreneur, you have to collaborate widely with a diverse group of people. Most of those do not report to you. If you are in a senior position, you might be able to flex your muscles and apply your authority. However, that might not work all the time, especially with people who are sitting outside of your reporting verticals. The good news is that intrapreneurs don’t need to rely on authority to lead. Leadership by authority is rigid and is not the best way of encouraging collaboration. People follow authority because they have to, not because they want to.

To lead without authority, you need to work on three things: building trust, seeking alignment, and creating vision.

• Building trust. Build your brand and reputation and let people who have worked with you advocate for you. You can achieve this by (1) delivering excellent quality of work, (2) demonstrating high integrity, and (3) building a sincere relationship with your work partners.

• Seeking alignment. Find the common ground between you and different work partners. Find out your common key performance indicators or how your idea would benefit them. Understand what your stakeholders want and always think of what you can offer them. Refer to “Stakeholders Management” under “Navigating a Large Organization” in this chapter.

• Creating vision. Have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Apply storytelling to share the purpose of your idea and illustrate how bringing your ideas to life impacts the world and your customers. Refer to “Storytelling” under “Communications” in this chapter.

Lead Through VUCA

We live in a time of unpredictable changes and a rapid pace of change. Digitalization, Industry 5.0, and the pandemic are just three examples of this. So how can leaders of all kinds navigate an uncontrollable environment such as the one that exists in business today? One tool that has been gaining popularity is called VUCA. The concept of VUCA was coined by the U.S. Army in the 1990s to describe the post–Cold War world at that time in terms of four factors: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.¹⁶

• Volatile (V). Change is rapid and dynamic.

• Uncertain (U). The future is hard to predict.

• Complex (C). Factors for consideration are many and they are interconnected.

• Ambiguous (A). Information is too incomplete to draw any conclusion.

Figure 7.13 Dimensions of VUCA

The importance of leadership through VUCA has been emphasized to entrepreneurs and leaders in large corporations. But intrapreneurs also face their own set of VUCA challenges during the process of innovating for their corporations:

• V: Customer behaviors are changing rapidly. Their expectations are shaped by the experiences brought to them by innovative companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, and Airbnb. The industry that your corporation operates in is likely to have intensified competition from startups and other tech giants that are expanding into the field. Coupled with that, technological advancement is happening at a high speed which makes newer and better solutions more readily available.

• U: No one can predict when your business will be disrupted. There is no guarantee that the competitive advantage your corporation has today will still be there tomorrow. When you work on a new idea, a new market, or a new business model, it’s always uncertain whether or not it will be a success before it is launched.

• C: Navigating a large organization is complex. You will need support from a wide group of people to get it over the line. There are also strategies, risks, and regulations that come into play. Understanding a complex problem in depth is not easy and it requires extensive research to discover the root causes. Building an idea from scratch, deploying technology, and assembling all the pieces are not simple tasks.

• A: You might never have 100 percent of the information before you call for a decision, whether it is deciding which problem to focus on, which idea to explore, or how to form the MVP for the first launch. When your idea goes beyond your corporation’s core competencies or targets a new segment or market, it is hard to have all the data available.

Given all of the aforementioned, intrapreneurs should build on the four areas to successfully navigate VUCA:

• See opportunity in each change. Even the most drastic change brings new opportunities. During the pandemic, a lot of people had to work from home or in a kind of hybrid mode between the office and home. This posed challenges to operating businesses without disruption. Food and Beverages (F&B) and retail businesses have taken a strong hit with lockdowns and social distancing rules. The cessation of traveling impacted airlines, hotels, and travel agencies. The pandemic had a wide adverse impact across various industries, small businesses in particular. In mid-2020, research by McKinsey & Company showed that between 1.4 million and 2.1 million U.S. small businesses could close permanently as a result of the first four months of the pandemic.¹⁷ This problem wasn’t just confined to the United States, with businesses in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa encountering the same issues. However, even in the darkest times, there are opportunities. Amid the slow economic growth, the pandemic led to a surge in e-commerce and accelerated digital transformation. The share of global retail trade for e-commerce rose from 14 percent in 2019 to about 17 percent in 2020.¹⁸ Companies operating online delivery, virtual meetings, and digital tools have benefited from the change in consumer behavior. Perhaps the most famous example is Zoom, a video conference tool. Its number of daily users rose from an average of 10 million worldwide in December 2019 to 300 million in April 2020. The company’s share price rose ninefold, from $62 in April 2019 to $559 in December 2020. Volatility provides opportunities. It is not easy to navigate but it offers chances for people who stay on top of trends and are willing to look around for signs.

• Keep up with innovation and technology. The world is uncertain with all of the ongoing changes. To bridge the gap between problem and solution, you need to keep yourself updated with emerging technology trends and innovations in the market. One of the traits of intrapreneurs is constant learning. Thanks to news and social media advancements, access to information is fast and easy. You can keep up with the latest changes by visiting sites like TechCrunch and WIRED, subscribing to innovation newsletters, and listening to podcasts relevant to your industry.

• Move with agility. Agile is mentioned under “Project Management” in this chapter. In fact, agile is more than a project management skill. It is a mindset that you can apply to navigate VUCA. Based on Henna Inam, author of Wired for Disruption, employees need to become catalyst leaders with four types of agilities:¹⁹

1. Context-setting agility: You need to scan the environment, anticipate what might change, and frame the context in a compelling way that influences others.

2. Stakeholder agility: You need to identify, seek out, and engage key stakeholders for input and alignment. Stakeholders have both the power to help you succeed or cause you to fail. Knowing the motivation of the stakeholders can help carry you toward your goal. Refer to “Stakeholder Management” under “Navigating a Large Organization”

3. Creative agility: You need multiple views when dealing with a complex problem and to step back to examine the assumptions being made. You need to be able to get in-depth into the problem and yet expand your creativity to try ways of solving it without getting stuck.

4. Self-leadership agility: You need to engage deeply in growing your self-awareness by first envisioning the kind of leader you want to be. There might not be a clear assignment that tasks you with solving the problem. You need to be self-driven and be able to motivate others to partner with you with self-leadership, not assigned leadership.

• Be comfortable making decisions without complete information. During the process of innovation, you will not be able to get all the data before you move on to the next stage. First, always verify the source of information to ensure you are making decisions based on factual and accurate information, even if it is not complete. Second, you need to synthesize all the information on hand and review its implications. Understand which piece of information is missing that you wish to have and analyze how much effort and time are required to find that missing piece. Most often, it is not realistic to wait until the data are complete. In that situation, intrapreneurs need to know how to break down the assumptions behind the decisions and move quickly to test them. Decide what parameters you need to measure to validate whether your decision is the right one and find a way to measure them. These parameters can include customer signup, retention, throughput rate, transaction uptake, and so on, depending on what the decision is. Once a decision is made and executed, observe the outcomes of the parameter in a timely way and respond or pivot if required.

Network Widely and Across Disciplines

Networking is an important skill for entrepreneurs as they venture into the unknown—they cannot be experts on everything and they need to tap into the resources of their network. If anything, networking is even more important for intrapreneurs because office politics comes into play. However, some people are hesitant when it comes to networking. It might seem like they are asking for favors or else they are not comfortable talking to people they don’t know.

In fact, networking is about building relationships. It shows your sincere curiosity about other people. Networking should never start with your desire to get something out of the relationship. It starts with a simple and genuine thought that you are interested in someone else’s story. And when you approach networking outcomes, you should always think first of what you can share or give rather than ask for. People tend to withdraw if your first goal of networking is selling or asking for help.

Many people in corporations view networking as a tool only for job hunting or getting their next assignment. That is, after all, the conventional way people harnessed their network. For intrapreneurs, though, the real impact of networking is far more than that.

How Can Intrapreneurs Benefit From Networking?

• Inspiration. Innovation can happen when you connect the dots across trends in different industries and fields. An application that works in one domain might be transferrable to others. Building a diverse network can help you widen your lens and draw inspiration from interacting with others.

• Domain expertise. Depending on the problem or solution you are working on, you should build a network with people who have a strong understanding of the domain. They have extensive insights based on their first-hand experience of the issues and they might also have made attempts to solve the problem but have not been able to. The sharing of learnings could be invaluable.

• Sponsorship. For an idea to take flight in an organization, intrapreneurs have to seek sponsorship from the management and relevant stakeholders. Networking with them helps you understand what motivates them and how you can better align with their thinking, increasing your chances of getting their support.

• Intrapreneurial rapport. Intrapreneurship is a process that requires persistence to steer through. Having a network of other intrapreneurs, inside or outside of your own organization, can help build a rapport system. You can exchange best practices and learnings along the journey.

Who Should you Build Your Professional Network With?

Networking is an investment of effort and time. Cast your net wide but, at the same time, try to prioritize as you need the energy to build new networks and maintain existing ones. Consider having the list of people below as your networking targets:

• Stakeholders in your corporation

• Other intrapreneurs in your corporation

• Cross-industry innovators or intrapreneurs

• Innovation consultants

• Subject-matter experts

• Startups that are working on similar problems

• People who have experience with the technology you are exploring for the solution

How Do you Build and Expand Your Network?

If you have been working in the same corporation for a long time, you might find your network becomes confined to your own department or team over the years. It is easy to fall into the trap of only connecting with the people you work with. There is nothing wrong with building a strong and deep network with your co-workers. But you might be missing the opportunity to widen your perspective as people who work around you tend to have similar thinking processes and shared knowledge of the same domain. You should try to expand your network. Below are some great places for intrapreneurs to network beyond their team:

• Reconnect with your old network—people who have made a career change or are no longer in your current circle.

• Attend internal town hall and corporate sharing sessions.

• Volunteer for an internal task force or think-tank.

• Attend industry and technology conferences and connect with the speakers and attendees.

• Sign up as a speaker at events to share your knowledge.

• Volunteer at industry events.

• Be a committee member of an industry group.

In my personal experience, I have found that the more you give, the stronger the network you can build from that engagement. An example of a network I benefited from was the internal digital task force for which I volunteered when I was working as a relationship manager in my early career. That was not part of my job scope. The digital task force was formed in the early days of digital transformation and, at that time, I did not know much about technology. It was an unofficial group in which some employees volunteered to imagine and brainstorm ideas that could benefit the future of the bank. By participating in the group, I forged close bonds with people who shared the same passion for digital transformation. With all the knowledge shared among members, I gained insights into exciting trends and learned a lot within a short timeframe. The network carried me a long way and some of the co-workers I met in the group became good friends.

Another example is Women in FinTech Singapore, a networking platform under the Singapore FinTech Association. I have a strong interest in the FinTech scene in Southeast Asia and I started to attend FinTech events when I relocated to Singapore. From the group, I built an extensive network of people working in the field. Later, I decided to become a committee member of the group to drive engagement. The group allowed me to stay close to industry progress and also meet interesting people who widened my horizons.

The main takeaway is that you should find out which professional networks you would like to engage with. If you have an interest in that group, start by participating in events, getting to know the team, and if you are keen, considering whether you can contribute or play a role such as becoming a committee member. If you’re short of time to commit too much, you can still stay close and build your network from it.

Getting Comfortable With Virtual Networking

Since the start of the pandemic, meeting people in person has been challenging. Many industry conferences, seminars, and roundtables have gone online. Besides these events, people have also been shifting their professional networking to virtual settings. Even if our normal, in-person lifestyles resume postpandemic, virtual networking is here to stay. But if you’re facing a challenge building a network remotely, you are not alone. Instead of seeing virtual networking as a second-best option, try to leverage social media and virtual tools. With the help of technology, you can break down geographical and timezone barriers to reach out to people around the world. These are things you can do to build your network virtually:

• Follow groups on social media: Research groups related to specific topics or industries on LinkedIn, Facebook, Clubhouse, Instagram, and so on. Since the start of the pandemic, many industry and technology groups have established a social media presence for marketing. Use keywords to search for the groups’ pages. Start following them and subscribe to their mailing lists to stay on top of updates and events.

• Postevent: When you attend a webinar, roundtable, or conference, make a note of the speakers or panel members with whom you want to connect. If they have shared contact details, you can reach out by sending a note to them. Start by thanking them for their contribution to the event and say that you found the information helpful or inspiring. You can share that you have relevant experience and express your interest in connecting for a further deep dive on the topic. Because you have attended their session and find the topic relevant, the person is more likely to be open to connecting than a cold contact.

• 1-2-1 using LinkedIn: Research people’s profiles on LinkedIn. Identify people you find interesting, who have a similar career, or who are interested in a similar topic. Reach out to them with a note. Your note should be sincere and not too common like “Let’s connect” or “Please add me to your network.” Understand what you have in common, why you want to connect, and how connecting might benefit them. A good example could be: “Hi John, your professional network is very impressive. I am working as/aspire to develop myself as a [role]. Since you’ve been in a similar field, I would like to connect with you and hope we can exchange ideas.” Do understand that LinkedIn outreach is always a probability game. Think how many people you replied to or connected with when you receive an invitation from a cold contact. Do not overthink it. Just do it and if it does not work, simply move on.

Navigating a Large Organization

One of the fundamental differences between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur is the environment. Entrepreneurs are very much on their own, free to explore what they want to build using their business instincts. Intrapreneurs are, of course, working in large corporations. If navigated well, the corporation offers an excellent platform and resource for the intrapreneur to leverage. On the flip side, it could also create constraints and roadblocks that an entrepreneur in the outside world would never expect to deal with. Let’s take a look at a few of the things intrapreneurs have to deal with.

Stakeholder Management

Entrepreneurs can start working on their own ideas based on their gut feelings or what their business instincts tell them the next big thing might be. They need no permission to start. Of course, the risks they take are high but they have the freedom to explore. This is not the case if you are an intrapreneur. To explore a new idea in a large corporation, you need to convince your stakeholders by finding alignment. You need to make sure what you are exploring is beneficial to your organization and that you are trying to make an impact on the business.

When I worked in the digital department at a regional bank, I met a wonderful mentor, Mok. At that time, Mok was the managing director of the community business portfolio. He was a sincere, humble, and approachable leader. Despite facing constant business challenges and having to stand up to other departments, he always found a way to resolve issues leaving everyone satisfied. He seemed to have the magic touch so I went to seek his advice. He did not lecture me on the topic. Instead, he told a story. That story has certainly changed the way I look at stakeholder management. I will share it with you now.

The Story of the 18th Cow

In a village, there was an old farmer who worked extremely hard to raise his family. He had three sons whom he loved dearly. After the farmer passed away, he left his sons 17 cows in his will. In his will, he’d written,

I have decided to distribute my livestock in the following order. My eldest son shall get half of the livestock. My second son will get one-third of them. And my youngest son will have one-ninth. No cow should be harmed or partly owned.

The three sons tried to do the math. Half of 17, nor one-third or one-ninth makes a whole number. How could they divide the cows without killing them or owning part of a cow? They could not figure out how to resolve the problem but they did not want to go against the old man’s last wishes. Since they could not decide what to do, they sought advice from the wisest man in the village. The wise man listened to their challenge. He thought about it for a while and said, “Bring your 17 cows here tomorrow and I will solve it for you.”

The next day, the three sons went to the wise man’s house with their 17 cows. The wise man was just arriving, having walked back from his neighbor’s house with one cow that he’d borrowed. The wise man said, “Now with your seventeen cows and my one cow, there is a total of 18 cows. Let’s see how I can make it work.

First, the eldest son gets half of 18 cows, which equals nine cows.

The second son then gets one-third, which equals six cows.

The youngest son will get one-ninth, which equals two cows.

Now that you have shared all 17 cows, I will take back the one cow I borrowed and return it to my neighbor.”

All three sons were happy that the problem was solved. Everyone got what they were entitled to. No cow was harmed or partly owned.

So what does the story tell us about stakeholder management?

The three brothers were struggling with their father’s instructions. Each was focused on what they were entitled to, based on their own motivation. The problem could not have been resolved if the three brothers had insisted on sharing the asset based only on what was written and the current scenario. They could have split the asset by killing the cows and taking the parts, which would have diminished the real value of what their father had left them.

However, stakeholder management is not a zero-sum game in which one gains and the other must lose. By bringing an additional cow, the wise man expanded the pie and made the sum of the cows dividable. He created an entirely different scenario in which the problem could be solved. Everyone could walk away with a satisfying result because he had created a win–win scenario. When facing stakeholder management issues, the challenge is finding “the eighteenth cow.” What is “the eighteenth cow” in your scenario and how can you find it and present it to your stakeholders? It could be strategic alignment, negotiated deals, future revenue, or an opportunity with mutual benefits. Articulate what is in it for stakeholders if they help you achieve your goal. The bottom line is that no one should be worse off by reaching an agreement, given their level of investment.

Dealing With the Corporate Immune System

If your idea is on the radical side and could cause disruption to the existing business, you should expect pushback. The corporation you work in has an existing hierarchy, policy, procedures, and system. It operates well together when the activities carried out are in line with what it is used to. Innovation is something new that the existing regime might not apply to. Like the human body, corporations have an immune system and the corporate immune system is fundamentally conservative.²⁰ It is there to provide stability and keep the organization running smoothly. It protects the organization from productivity disruption and gives most employees rules and routines to follow so that they provide reliable services to customers. When you are trying to push forward a new idea, you are pushing your corporation (including the management, your team, and the stakeholders involved) out of its comfort zone. When shaken, the immune system can perceive your idea as a threat. It then triggers a reaction to resist and neutralize the change, even though it might bring good results. This resistance can take various forms from resource retrieval, deprioritization, and a decision-making black hole, to political maneuvering.

Bootstrap During the Early Stage

Bootstrapping means building your idea using existing resources, without asking for additional funding or investment. Typically, you would be able to draw upon knowledge, skills, and person-hours. If you can find allies in the corporate who are interested in exploring the idea, the resource could be multiplied. This might sound weird. Why would you bootstrap like an entrepreneur while you ask for resources from within your corporation? The reason is that, depending on the culture and infrastructure, asking for funding does not always help the idea progress. The problem with corporate funding is that it might put your iterative, experimental approach in danger.²¹ A rigid approach in a business environment can be harmful to early-stage ideas. It could sound outrageous if you ask for a half-million-dollar check. So as an intrapreneur, you need to be resourceful. Think through what you actually need as resources. In most scenarios, you only need two things: people and tools. People could be researchers, designers, prototypers, engineers, or domain experts. Tools could be the software, the technology, or the applications. Be specific about your ask and source them by going to the right people to support you to move forward. People might not have the money but they might bring along the skills and tools you need. That is if you can convince them of your idea and collaborate with them. Build traction and tangible outcomes by bootstrapping and use the outcome as leverage to build a solid pitch for increased investment.

Dealing With “You Are Eating My Pie”

In the open market, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to launch products. If one of those products disrupts the market, the winner takes all. As with Darwin’s law of evolution by natural selection, the fittest solution survives. But it is not that easy in a corporation. During my time working as a corporate innovation coach, I have seen the trigger of the corporate immune system at work. Most commonly, it was because a new idea had the potential to cannibalize the existing business. I have seen wonderful ideas that offer customers a better experience at low cost, with a good chance of being profitable, shut down because they might put existing products at risk. The existing products were not even good. They were clumsy, expensive to the customer, and gave them a poor experience. And yet people rallied to defend the product and hammered the new idea, even before it took shape. The emotional attachment to old products was strong. You’d usually hear defensive voices say things like:

• We have invested so much in the old product over the years.

• We have built a large team to support the old product’s maintenance and customer service.

• Customers are used to the old product.

• The old product is still on par with our competitors.

• We can launch the new idea five years from now when the old product comes to the end of its life. By then, we would have earned enough from the old product.

As an intrapreneur caught in this situation, you would feel the tension, especially when the old product is backed by powerful and senior stakeholders. To push forward, you can try a few approaches:

• Find your super anchor. Identify influential leaders in the organization who embrace innovation and seek their buy-in. Make them advocates of your idea. Leverage them as strong anchors who can help you reach out to other stakeholders. They might be in a better position to convince other stakeholders to partner with you, given their relationships and network.

• Try to partner with the resistant force. First, find out what is the key business target of the people who are opposing your idea. They did not object to your idea for no reason. They might have felt the threat of losing their business. What if you make them the owner of the new product? That way, the revenue from your new product benefits their books. They would then have a stake in the idea and the motivation to make it successful. You might think that the credit is being taken away from you but you have to think bigger. Your career does not rely on one idea alone. The skills and capability you demonstrated during the execution will take you to your next venture. As an intrapreneurial talent, you might not want to create just one single product and be the owner of it forever.

Corporate leaders in charge of innovation strategy need to build a mechanism to resolve the conflict of cannibalism for the company’s long-term growth. You can refer to Chapter 6, “Ideas That Might Self-Cannibalize” for more information.

So far, I have discussed the skills of intrapreneurs, including disciplined innovation, leadership, and navigating a large organization, earlier in this chapter. But there is one last essential skill an intrapreneur must have in order to solicit buy-in for their ideas: communication. Every successful intrapreneur is required to act as a salesperson when the time comes, to articulate the idea to others in a convincing way. By demonstrating strong communication skills, intrapreneurs can attract others to join their team, provide the team with investment, and provide management support to help them remove roadblocks like red tape. In the section below, I’ll cover the advanced communication skills that intrapreneurs require.

Communications

Ability to Demystify Complex Concepts

Most people reject information that they do not understand. It makes them feel confused and stupid, which might trigger negative emotions toward the idea presented. As an intrapreneur, you are often dealing with complex problems. Sometimes the solution that you come up with can be highly technical or one requiring deep domain expertise. Technically, it can be extremely complicated. However, when you are selling your idea to stakeholders or explaining it to people outside of your core team, it should always be easy to understand. Do not assume that the audience has the same level of knowledge as you do. Do not expect them to know the jargon of your field. If you can break down a complex concept into something easily understandable, you will get more, and faster, buy-in. The last thing you want is for your brilliant idea to be undermined and discounted because the audience does not understand it.

Consider an intrapreneur in a bank who is trying to pitch an idea to detect fraudulent payments using artificial intelligence. Consider the following two ways of selling the same concept:

• Approach 1

Our team is applying deep-learning techniques to predict fraudulent transactions made in the client’s shared-service center. The learning is unsupervised, using structured and unstructured data relevant to the use case. Data processing throughput is 5,000 transactions per second. We trained the model using historical data from the last six months. Our model training followed the 80/20 rule. So far, our type I error rate is 2 percent.

• Approach 2

Our corporate clients are processing hundreds of payment transactions every day. Among them, some transactions could be fraudulent. To stop those transactions quickly to avoid financial loss to our clients, our team is working on a solution using artificial intelligence. Our solution aims to detect fraudulent transactions and bring them to our clients’ attention before they happen. This could potentially save $500,000 worth of losses per quarter due to fraudulent payments and the headcount we deploy to investigate these losses.

Which approach do you prefer as an audience? Which one do you find easier to understand and more relatable? The first approach is more presenter-centric. The presenter focuses on what they want to share with the audience and what they believe is important information based on their domain knowledge. The second approach is more audience-centric. The presenter takes care of what the audience wants to know and what is important for them to take away. When communicating a complex concept, the key is to adopt an audience-centric approach. Consider using the following techniques:

1. Understand who your audience is. Seek to know who the audience is in your setting. Do you know their level of knowledge and experience relevant to the topic? Do they understand the industry terms? Are they aware of the trends?

2. Know what your audience cares about. What does your audience really want to know? Depending on who they are, they might have different motivations. If they are in sales, mostly they’ll want to know how your solution will increase sales opportunities. If they are strategists, they’ll want to know how your solution fits into the company’s three-year plan. If they are product teams, they’ll want to know how your solution increases product revenue and how it integrates with existing product suites. Sometimes what you find the most fascinating part of your project could be totally irrelevant to the people you are presenting it to. Think about what is in it for them when you plan your pitch.

3. Do not assume. Imagine you have been working on the same problem and solution for the last couple of months and you know every bit of it. You get it. But your audience was not there in the laboratory with you. They have limited prior understanding of the issue, not a thorough understanding like you. Give them a sufficiently high-level, big-picture overview to begin with. If the audience mix is more generic, most likely they’ll want to know the problem, the solution, and the benefits before they can deep-dive.

• Avoid any jargon. It’s common for a highly complex business environment to have acronyms and terms related to particular domains. Most of us use them without thinking. It is important to replace jargon with plain language. Some audiences get lost after a few terms and lose interest. More engaged audience members will raise their hands and ask questions, but that will still interrupt your flow. Ask yourself whether the use of jargon is really necessary and whether it helps to convey the message. And 99 percent of the time, the answer is no.

Product Storytelling

You can have a great product, but a compelling story puts the company into motion.

—Ben Horowitz, American entrepreneur and investor

Humans are drawn to stories. From fairy tales to Netflix movies, people have always enjoyed a good narrative. Well-crafted stories can lead to a change of emotions and help to connect people as if they were experiencing the story itself. You might have heard about corporations using storytelling in branding and marketing. The fact is storytelling also applies to business ideas. When you are pitching your idea, you want to get other people’s buy-in and support. The more compelling and relatable the story is, the easier it is to convince your audience. Storytelling should not be viewed as a marketing gimmick. Instead, it should be used as a vehicle to share your mission and passion for the idea.

If you are used to selling ideas by product features and functions, you might struggle to come up with a story. The fact is you might have already known the story without realizing it. Each idea should have some linkage and relevancy to a customer’s story. If you’ve followed the technique introduced under “Problem-Solving by Design Thinking,” there’s a good chance you have understood the users’ perspectives and built empathy with them. To tell a compelling story, you can make use of the following steps:

1. Build a character. Use your customer to build your character in the story. Know your customer’s persona. What are the person’s characteristics, behavior, job, and goal? What does your customer’s normal day look like?

2. What’s the tension or conflict? What is your customer’s unsolved problem or unarticulated needs? What is stopping your customer from achieving their goals? How do they feel about it? What is this problem costing them?

3. Imagine the possibility. What if the solution exists today? What does the ideal scenario look like? How would your customer feel about the problem being solved? How does it affect your customer’s life or interaction with others?

Use real-life examples as much as possible and craft the story of your idea around its purpose. Don’t ever lead into the story by stating, “Let me share a story with you.” Do not even mention the word “story.” Instead, make it real. If you happen to be one of the users of the product and are affected by the problem, use your own story to make it more personal and powerful.

Storytelling is a complementary technique to enhance the persuasiveness of your message. It helps create a strong impression of your mission and provides an emotional punch. Well-told stories will resonate with stakeholders, team members, and customers. It also makes it easier for people to retain information when it is told as a story. Despite that, beware of using storytelling alone. Without data and facts to support the commercials, it would not be sufficient to convince stakeholders, especially those who would invest resources in your idea. Learn to combine various communication techniques, and decide when and how to bring in a mix of relevant information for a good pitch.

In this chapter, we have discussed the various skills required for intrapreneurs to be successful. They should be “comb-shape” talents who are good generalists but with the capability to go deep into various domains. They need to know how to innovate in a disciplined manner. They must be able to understand problems, master leadership skills, and be skillful communicators when pitching ideas and breaking down complex concepts.

As a leader, you first need to assess whether your employees possess these skills and where the gaps are. Every intrapreneur is unique in their skills and you need to help them form a development plan to upskill.

It is rare for an intrapreneur to be a master of all the skills and domain knowledge required to execute an idea on their own. Innovation will proceed much more efficiently if your intrapreneurs join forces and work together. In the next chapter, we will discuss the various types of intrapreneurs and how they work best as a team.