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Business Innovation Accelerator | Innovation Fair
Strategic Intrapreneuring | Industrial
Ecology Intrapreneuring
Sponsoring Innovation
Workshops | Community Entrepreneuring
Community Entrepreneuring Accelerator
The Business Innovation Accelerator (BIA), our flagship intrapreneuring
workshop, has helped over 350 intrapreneurial teams to discover their intrapreneurial
spirit, develop high performance teamwork, write business plans and get feedback
from venture capitalists. All this happens during five face to face days over an
elapsed time of about six weeks.
Our workshops for intrapreneurial teams support the teams directly, as they work
on their innovation projects. Participants practice the skills and absorb the attitudes
that lead to intrapreneurial success. Teams get feedback from fellow participants,
faculty and various experts.
"Coming from strictly a technical background, I had not been exposed to marketing,
manufacturing, and finance responsibilities. The [BIA] introduced me to all the functions
needed to make a profitable business.
I also came away with some valuable lessons for getting a business off the ground:
1) don't be reluctant to take the initiative; 2) persist in finding alternative methods
to get things done."
-- Dr. Stan Levy, Senior Research Associate, Research & Development Division,
Polymer Products Department
Click here to see a complete BIA workshop outline
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The innovation fair is a one-day event that brings intrapreneurs out of the
woodwork and creates interaction with potential sponsors and potential collaborators.
Typical results:
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Massive cross fertilization of ideas
- Idea people with new skills in analyzing and presenting their business ideas
- Several projects find sponsors and take off
- A strong message that management supports innovation
- Many remotivated intrapreneurs
- A stronger cross organizational network of innovators
The Strategic Intrapreneuring Workshop is a central part of our process for turning
strategy into action. After the strategy is communicated, volunteers with innovations
that align with the strategy attend the Strategic Intrapreneuring Workshop.
Story: A division general manager visited 20 sites to broadcast the strategic intent.
He invited those with ideas for achieving the strategy to come to a Strategic Intrapreneuring
Workshop. Two days before the event, about 25 were expected. On the day of the event,
115 showed up. Two days later, after describing the rigors of intrapreneuring and
running our proprietary processes to advertise the ideas and form teams, fourteen
teams emerged, averaging about 8 people each.
By the end of the workshop, the business plans of nine ventures were approved. While
other divisions of the company that had started their strategy process at the same
time were still early in a more bureaucratic idea screening process, the nine intrapreneurial
ventures were launched. Six succeeded, creating profitable new products that supported
a coherent strategy. The division practicing strategic intrapreneuring grew in a
strategic way and the general manager was recognized and promoted ahead of his slower
moving peers.
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Objective: To pursue an industrial ecology
strategy by releasing the intrapreneurial energy of the organization in the direction
of ecologically sound activities.
Our intrapreneurial ecology workshop accelerates the practice of industrial ecology
focusing everything we have learned about managing innovation on innovations that:
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drive better environmental performance
- create products and services that emulate nature's safe and efficient ways
- close the loop on "wastes"
- replace toxic materials and processes
- reduce energy use
- >reduce environmental impact
- find cheaper proactive ways to meet environmental standards
The workshop combines world class industrial ecology and intrapreneuring faculty
with Pinchot & company's processes for creating intrapreneurial initiatives.
The output includes three to five well-considered industrial ecology initiatives,
each with its own intrapreneurial team prepared to drive its successful execution.
As in the Business Innovation Accelerator, the teams learn and practice the secrets
of high performance intrapreneurial teamwork, research their idea, and create an
action-oriented business. They present their finished business plans to a panel including
corporate executives, an industrial ecologist and an outside venture capitalist.
Those teams whose plans are approved for implementation are then supported through
the intrapreneurial implementation process.
Other industrial ecology services help in:
1. Surfacing the ideas and "ecopreneurs" needed for cost-effective conversion
of wasteful or toxic processes to processes that are more cost effective, sustainable
and safe.
2. Developing, communicating and executing an ecologically wise strategic intent
to bring out the pride, loyalty and initiative of employees.
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Definition: Sponsors are persons of influence
who guide, protect and find resources for an intrapreneurial team.
Fact: In most organizations the biggest inhibitor of innovation is management that
is not geared to encourage and sponsor it. About 5% of managers are effective sponsors
of innovation. Many would like to be, but lack the necessary skills and understanding.
Objective: To give managers and leaders the understanding, skills, and motivation
they need to become more effective sponsors of innovation.
The focus of the Sponsoring Innovation Workshop is not the leader's role as hands
on intrapreneur, but rather on the leadership skills needed to bring out the intrapreneurial
leadership potential of others.
Topics:
Process: Lots of action learning
The emphasis is on learning through a combination of stories, metaphors, role-playing
and action learning.
On line follow up coaching: During the workshop, participants form support teams
to keep track of each other's progress as sponsors. After the workshop on line coaches
keep the support teams active with on-line conferences, reminders and specific processes
for keeping the support team members applying what they learned.
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Our community entrepreneuring practice grew out of a project in Port Alberni,
British Columbia, where the local fishing and logging industries had exhausted their
resource base. We provided course materials and designs to a local community organization
that was helping unemployed loggers and fishermen start ecologically sustainable
businesses. We were delighted at how well it worked -- how the community stood behind
the new businesses and how successful they became.
Our goal in this practice is to help troubled communities create a web of mutually
supporting sustainable businesses that build a stronger community. We don't deliver
all the services ourselves, but rather support local community organizations and
local consultants with training materials, train the trainer workshops, consulting,
and online coaching.
Community entrepreneuring focuses on businesses that strengthen the community. For
example, we look for businesses that bring money into the community. The new funds
they bring into the community recirculate, supporting other businesses such as restaurants
and laundries. We welcome businesses that take advantage of local resources, either
by adding value (e.g. wooden furniture, fancy smoked salmon) or by benefiting from
natural beauty without consuming it (e.g. ecotourism, attracting knowledge workers).
The first step in community entrepreneuring is defining a positive vision for the
community to restore hope. The next step is using The Community Entrepreneuring Accelerator
to train volunteer entrepreneurs to start and run the businesses needed to realize
the vision.
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The Community Entrepreneuring Accelerator helps aspiring entrepreneurs in selecting
a business idea, developing the entrepreneur that lies within them, building a team
around their vision and writing the business plan needed to raise money to start
the business. The program includes:
The history of our community
We begin with respected local old-timers who create a perspective on all
the changes that the community has experienced over time. This establishes the strength
of the community and shows people that the pattern of employment the community has
just lost is not its only means of survival. The old mindset of a town dependent
on a big extractive industry (such as logging, fishing, mining or manufacturing)
shifts to a culture that embraces diversity, creativity, sustainability, initiative
and service.
From big company employment to the entrepreneurial life
The transition from the highly structured environment of the big company
to the total responsibility and rapid changes of the entrepreneurial start-up is
not for everyone. We evoke the entrepreneurial spirit of those who are ready and
help others to realize that they may prefer working for an entrepreneur to being
one.
Discovering your deep values
Most resource based communities got in trouble because too many people
were too willing to sacrifice their deepest values to keep their jobs. The way out
requires understanding what really matters and rebuilding the community based on
adhering to those values. We lead people through a creative exploration of their
values and the creative search for business opportunities that align withthem. Entrepreneurship
is about the market, but it is also a route to personal transformation and growth.
Without hooking the process to values that transformation will not take place. Without
transformation, the unemployed loggers and fishers will never succeed as entrepreneurs.
The entrepreneurial community
A community built on a web of many very different small businesses is
more robust, more sustainable and more honest than a community hanging off a few
giant companies. Many diverse forms of economic viability create a strong base for
genuine community spirit. The small businessperson can contribute to the community
without fear of offending a boss, and thus can achieve a higher sense of individual
and community purpose.
Charting a new course
At the core of our program is the creation of a solid business plan. We
provide training and online coaching and establish support systems using local bankers
and established business people.
Building your entrepreneurial team
Only the smallest businesses these days are the brainchild of a single
person. Entrepreneurship is not a solo sport; it requires a team, so the Community
Entrepreneurship Accelerator helps build that team through action learning and reflecting
on how the team performs in a series of team based exercises.
Low cost market research
Many community entrepreneurs cannot afford expensive market research professionals,
so we teach them to do market research for themselves.
Building your support network
The key to success in starting a business is building your support network.
We mobilize the whole community to support its entrepreneurs and teach the entrepreneurs
how to build and use a network of volunteer supporters.
Keeping your enterprise on track
Launching a new business is only the beginning. One must sustain it through
the buffeting shocks and challenges it will encounter as it develops. Pinchot &
Company provides a space for online community support as ventures evolve.
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