Anchorage Daily News

Do you want to start your own business and still keep your paycheck and company-provided medical insurance?

Do you want the excitement of crafting innovative new products -- like the next Post-it note -- but realize that you financially and emotionally require the safety net that continued employment offers?

Do you have a dynamite idea for a new venture but not the funds or the inclination to risk your own money on a project that might not fly?

If so, you may be an ideal intrapreneur.

Unlike entrepreneurs who leap off the cliff to start their own businesses, intrepreneurs enjoy entrepreneurial pleasure while safely working for companies that furnish steady paychecks and medical insurance.

In this "have your cake and eat it too" world, intrapreneurs get to invent, innovate and achieve aided by their company's financial resources. Like entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs possess conviction, passion and drive. However, instead of having to strike out on their own with fingers crossed, they persuade their companies to support their projects with marketing credibility, technological resources and distribution channels.

Want to know if you've got what it takes to become an intrapreneur? Have you earned your employer's trust? Would you be willing to give up part of your salary for the chance to try out your business idea if you could enjoy awesome rewards should your ideas prove successful? Do you have what it takes to take a project from dream to implementation?

What are the downsides to intrapreneuring? Intrapreneurial employees lose control of the profits they earn for their companies even though they work as hard as most business owners. According to Gifford Pinchot's book "Intrapreneuring," "One of the most significant questions every intrapreneur must ask is whether success is worth the price. When night after night your peers go home on time while you stay, you have to wonder about your good sense." While some companies richly reward intrapreneurs, other companies assume standard salaries are sufficient recompense.

If you're weighing entrepreneurialism vs. intrapreneurialism because you've created an exciting new cookie recipe or an intriguing new computer game and want to make a million, consider what the differences mean in real terms. If you take the entrepreneurial route, you will spend a huge sum on advertising and merchandising before seeing your product sold in even a small number of grocery or computer stores. When an intrapreneur working for General Mills or Best Buy develops a new product, national vendors immediately give the new product space. Says 3M intrapreneurial employee Art Fry, "I have only so much time in my life and I want to do as much as I can. I can do things faster here as part of 3M and so I get to do more things. Big companies have resources that can make developing a new idea far easier for an intrapreneur than the same task would be for an entrepreneur."

What does it take to be an intrapreneur? According to classic texts on intrapreneuring, key guidelines include:

• It is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

• Circumvent any orders aimed at stopping your dream.

• Work underground as long as you can -- publicity triggers the corporate immune system.

Intrapreneurs specialize in blind optimism overlaid by persistence.

When his bosses told intrapreneur Phil Palmquist to stop working on reflective coatings because that wasn't his job, he continued four nights a week from 7 p.m. on until he had a product 100 times brighter than white paint.

When intrapreneur George Swenson wouldn't stop working on a new roofing material, his employer fired him. Despite this, George continued working on the project and once he had it working, his company relented and rehired him.

Do you have a dream? You can go it on your own as an entrepreneur -- or you can try intrapreneuring -- a potentially easier route.

Lynne Curry is a local management trainer, consultant and syndicated columnist. Her advice and opinion column appears Mondays. Questions for her column may be faxed to her at 258-2157 or mailed to her c/o Anchorage Daily News, P.O. Box 149001, Anchorage 99514-9001. Her e-mail address is lynne@thegrowthcompany.net.

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