Sustainable Intrapreneur Program

Business Challenge

All too often in corporate life, the CEO announces a vision and the average employee is mystified or indifferent.  With sustainability, it is different.  It is a unique opportunity to rally the company leadership, to empower employees and foster innovation from the bottom-up.  In addition, it is also a powerful retention and recruitment tool.

Unfortunately, there are few companies today seizing this opportunity.   Most are unsure how to harness the intrapreneurial (corporate entrepreneurial) talent of their employees to innovate and address emerging challenges.  Even fewer are empowering employees to maximize positive environmental and social impact, lowering costs and creating new business opportunities in the process.

 

Instead of tapping into their own resources, most companies rely on external sources, missing an opportunity to not only support their staff but to inspire them as well.  Harvesting a culture of sustainability and intrapreneurialism will empower employees to initiate change and create new opportunities throughout the organization.

 

Sustainable Intrapreneur Program

The Sustainable Intrapreneur Program (SIP) helps management and employees identify, empower, harness, harvest and manage innovation and creativity in the workplace, in a sustainable way.  It creates a system for employees and management to work together to build powerful innovations and solutions that address corporate challenges.  SIP also incorporates an incentive program to reward those intrapreneurs whose solutions are adopted by the company.

Key Content

SIP consists of three key content areas:  Assess, Learn, and Sustain intrapreneurs:

  • Assess: As a first step, an assessment of the company’s processes for employee engagement, culture for innovation and sustainability, and metrics for measuring these impacts is performed.  Based on this initial assessment, a detailed curriculum is developed.  Additionally, a formalized innovation and support structure is co-created with management and employees.  Lastly, an Intrapreneur Center and a Pitch Contest Program are built around the training and communication systems designed for the company.
  • Learn: Two components of the SIP will be implemented:  Intrapreneur and Sustainability.

Intrapreneur component— begins with management being provided the skills to identify, encourage and integrate intrapreneurial innovation among employees.  They will also learn to identify key innovations that align with the corporate mission.  Lastly, an emphasis will be made in improved collaboration with other departments.  Employees will be mentored on how to innovate and create a business concept, build a business plan and align their innovation with the corporation’s commitments to profits, environmental impact and community involvement.

Sustainability component— both management and employees engage in materiality mapping activities to learn about the various impacts their company has on environmental and social issues. They learn the importance of corporate accountability and how to leverage their solutions in the marketplace.  Lastly, training will focus on how to measure, monitor and maintain environmental solutions that position the company for competitive advantage.

  • Innovate: As the SIP system is set up and the personnel are trained, an internal process to review and communicate new innovative ideas is developed and maintained using a proprietary set of tools from the Shift Group.  In addition to the Intrapreneurial Center and Pitch Contest Program, highly trained business coaches are available to intrapreneurs on an as-needed basis.  This system is both physical and virtual in nature with a platform for cross-communication between employees company-wide, supporting each other in their innovations.  A reward system is also implemented to encourage participation.

Target Audience

The SIP is suited for companies who are committed to all of the following:

  • building a truly sustainable business
  • empowering their employees
  • maximizing profitability

 

The SIP can be leveraged by corporations ranging from those new to sustainability to those far along this path.  The program would be open to managers and employees at all levels who will build the company’s competitive advantage by integrating state-of-the-art sustainable business practices.

Outcomes

Full integration of the Sustainable Intrapreneur Program will allow the company to:

  • Identify substantial cost savings with employee solutions to inefficient processes and waste
  • Improve employee retention through a culture of empowerment and mentorship
  • Introduce new, profitable and sustainably-focused products and services