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)
With “social entrepreneurship” and the “green revolution” being the catchy phrases of the past decade, companies are looking for creative and innovative people who can add value to a company without finding the need to start something on their own. Companies are looking for intrapreneurs - these people are more likely to be hired and more likely to start their own entrepreneurial endeavors in the future. We see this today from examples such as the founders of Twitter and Instagram who sold assets to their companies for billions of dollars but still being hands on in the day-to-day operations of these companies. They did this not because those were their initial goals (I would like to think not at least), but because their visions saw the value in these intrapreneurial decisions. They knew the companies would not be what they are today without these decisions. Let’s face it, not everybody will be successful being an entrepreneur. There just isn’t enough demand and resources in this world, not to mention that there are too many people who are unemployed or underemployed, who would rather settle for anything or something a little better than what they already have.
I say all this to urge my peers to invest as much time and energy into researching on people/companies that are already doing what they themselves want to do, as much as the time and energy they use to pursue their vision. At the same time, to look into people/companies that are not doing anything related to what you want to do but your idea could enhance or improve a company in one way or another. Hopefully this will discourage them less but rather allow them to see opportunities for partnering or for lending their skills into idea that has already taken off. There is no rule in business that says one cannot team up with someone or something else.
- Andrew Mahiga, Maanisha! Ltd.
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