Intrapreneuring and the Intelligent Organization

Imagine running your own business WITHIN a large corporation.  You and a handful of colleagues making every decision about how and what work you engage in—what you do with your retained earnings, who to hire into your business, how to generate more business, how to be more efficient and what investments you should make.  While it may not be for everyone, the Pinchot’s make a strong case for just such an arrangement between employees and their employers.

The Intelligent Organization was an idea birthed by the originators of Intrapreneuring.  Gifford and Libba Pinchot have spent their lives training and facilitating entrepreneurs and organizations so that every one wins.  They know first hand what makes innovation happen and at the core of their understanding is the motivation and spirit of the entrepreneur.  With the Intelligent Organization, they take their ideas a step further and explain how organizations can create an environment within which entrepreneurs are encouraged to take appropriate risks, to be accountable to their decisions and critically in tune with their customers real needs.

You can read a brief summary of their book where they explain the importance of systems thinking, open access to information, freedom of speech, multilayer autonomy, self-organizing systems and choice rather than monopoly and what makes the Intelligent Organization work, from distributed and local decision making to the human characteristics that link people together.