Entrepreneur VS. Intra-preneur

In the past few months I have attended a few seminars/discussion forums centered on “youth entrepreneurship.” I had the privilege of speaking at one forum facilitated by a youth group called Yes! Tanzania. While listening to other speakers and audience members, I came to realize that some, if not a lot of people are mistaking the definition or the characteristics of an entrepreneur. For example, not many people were and are able to differentiate what a business person is to who an entrepreneur is. The key message they are missing is that being an entrepreneur is having more of a mindset/vision than it is making money or a product/service that will sell. Let’s face it, there are lot of entrepreneurs that are not wealthy, as much as there are a lot of people doing business that are not entrepreneurs.

Another observation I have made in the past few months is that people – especially young people – are bent on either coming up with an original idea by themselves, that will make them money or doing exactly what another person is doing, but making it better, cheaper, more efficient etc. I am yet to hear a young person talk about joining forces/ideas with another person or company to improve their idea and most likely increase their chances of success. Nobody has confessed to being an intrapreneur. So who is an intrapreneur? According to an online article by Forbes Magazine, “An intrapreneur is someone who has an entrepreneurial streak in his or her DNA, but chooses to align his or her talents with a large organization in place of creating his or her own. “ (source: Forbes )

I believe thinking more like an intrapreneur can increase the likelihood of a person and/or people gaining success in their business endeavors. This may be surprising to most people but Steve Jobs – a person who many consider to be one of the greatest “entrepreneurs” of our generation was actually an intrapreneur. In a case study conducted by The Intrapreneurship Institute titled “Steve Jobs the Ultimate Intrapreneur and Ultimate Entrepreneur,” it states that, “Apple Computer itself was potentially an intrapreneurial venture, as it was an outgrowth of two big corporation employees. Steve Jobs had worked at Atari and Steve Wozniak (“Woz”) worked at Hewlett Packard part-time when he and Steve Jobs were first experimented with creating “personal computer.”” (source: Intrepreneurship Institute)

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – Whose baby is it anyway?

In today’s world of copy & paste via computers and the Internet, original work is becoming somewhat of a dying art form. However, most tertiary institutions around the world are combating this by having strict plagiarism policies and proof of ownership of work. In fact, universities and education institutions in the west earn revenue from the intellectual property created by their students and staff alike. But this is only in academia. In developed nations and amongst corporations and multinational companies, there are also patent and copyright laws, which further ensure ideas, and inventions belong to the original owner. In the most recent case we can look at Samsung’s suing of Apple over such a topic. Not only does intellectual property affect companies, but it may also affect countries’ rights or lack there of to produce goods as this article by Henry Mitzberg suggests.

So what is intellectual property? It is not a new concept but I find – especially in Tanzania and probably most of Africa – that it is a concept that is not understood or even thought to be able to physically possess. On the contrary, not only can it be possessed, it can be transferred and modified just like any other physical properties.

Intellectual property is “Intangible property that include ‘patents’, ‘trade marks’, ‘copyright’ and registered and un registered ‘design rights.” Conventional intellectual property is categorized into two categories: -

1. Industrial property – which consist of patents of invention trade and service marks, industrial designs, geographical indication of origin, undisclosed information (trade secrets), integrated circuits topography.

2. Copyrights which include – literary and artistic works performance, architectural designs and some kinds of computer databases.

In the case of Tanzania, one would be surprised at just how long intellectual property right laws have been in place. According to a workshop that was conducted by Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture (TCCIA) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in May 2005, intellectual property right laws were implemented by British colonialist in 1924 and Tanzania became a member of WIPO in 1983 (source: WIPO) of course who these rights protected is a debatable issue on it own.