Harnessing Intrapreneurship & Entrepreneurship for Innovation & Growth

On November 12, 2025, Bacon & Business hosted a panel discussion on intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship as dual growth engines for business. The audience-driven conversation trended more toward intrapreneurship, and the following is a summary of that discussion.

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Most business owners face a challenging paradox: They need to protect what’s working today while building what will work tomorrow. Fail at either and your business is at risk. Do the first without the second and you’ll be disrupted by competitors. Do the second without the first and you’ll run out of cash before your innovations pay off.

Intrapreneurship — the practice of creating value through innovation within a larger organization — offers a powerful solution to this dilemma. It’s about turning your employees into internal innovators who can help your business evolve without abandoning what made it successful in the first place.

Both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs share the same innovative mindset, but they operate in fundamentally different worlds:

The entrepreneur is building something from scratch. They’re raising money from investors, establishing credibility in the market, and bearing all the financial risk personally. They own everything — the company, the equity, the rewards — but they also shoulder all the losses.

The intrapreneur is an employee building something new inside an established company. They’re using the company’s resources, brand, and infrastructure. Instead of pitching to venture capitalists, they’re convincing internal stakeholders. Instead of risking their savings, they’re risking their career capital and reputation.

Think of it this way: The entrepreneur is starting a restaurant from scratch, taking out loans and risking everything. The intrapreneur is the head chef at an established restaurant chain, convincing leadership to launch an entirely new concept using the company’s kitchens, supply chain, and reputation.

The key differences:

• Risk: Entrepreneurs face high personal financial risk. Intrapreneurs face career and political risk, but the company absorbs the financial losses.
• Resources: Entrepreneurs must secure everything independently. Intrapreneurs leverage existing capital, brand recognition, and infrastructure.
• Skills needed: Entrepreneurs focus on external fundraising and market validation. Intrapreneurs excel at internal persuasion, bridge-building, and navigating organizational politics.
• Rewards: Entrepreneurs get ownership and equity. Intrapreneurs receive bonuses, recognition, promotions, and career advancement.
• Primary challenge: Entrepreneurs battle lack of capital and market uncertainty. Intrapreneurs battle internal bureaucracy and resistance to change.

Many talented people fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum and can move between these roles with the right circumstances and support.

Managing innovation can feel overwhelming. How do you allocate resources between today’s needs and tomorrow’s opportunities? The Three Horizons framework, developed by McKinsey, provides a practical structure for thinking about this challenge.

Imagine your business as a farm. You need to harvest this season’s crop (that’s paying the bills today), till the ground and plant seeds for next season (that’s your near-future growth), and research entirely new crops that might become your farm’s future (that’s transformational innovation). Neglect any one of these and your farm — your business — will eventually fail.

Horizon 1: Defending and Extending Your Core (70% of resources)

This is your current business — the products and services that customers already associate with your company name. These generate most of your profits and cash flow right now.

• Focus: Make incremental improvements to increase efficiency, squeeze out better margins, and extend your existing success to adjacent customer segments
• Examples: Improving your manufacturing process, adding small features to existing products, or expanding into a neighboring geographic market
• Why it matters: This horizon generates the cash you need to fund the other two horizons. Without a strong Horizon 1, everything else dies.

Horizon 2: Building Adjacent Opportunities (20% of resources)

These are emerging opportunities that build on what you already do well but push into new territory. They require significant investment and won’t be profitable immediately, but they represent your bridge from present to future.

• Focus: Extend your current capabilities into new markets, make material changes to existing products, or test new ways of delivering value to customers
• Examples: A consulting firm expanding from strategy work into implementation services, or a manufacturing company using its expertise to serve an entirely new industry
• Why it matters: Horizon 2 projects eventually become your new Horizon

Horizon 3: Creating Transformational Ventures (10% of resources)

These are radical, long-term bets on entirely new business models or technologies. They’re small experiments, pilot programs, or research projects that might become your company’s future core business.

• Focus: Explore ideas that could fundamentally change your business model, test unproven technologies, or position your business for a market that doesn’t quite exist yet
• Examples: A traditional retailer building an e-commerce platform in the early 2000s, or a taxi company investing in autonomous vehicle technology
• Why it matters: These projects protect your business from future disruption. They’re your insurance policy against becoming irrelevant.
• The critical insight: You must work on all three horizons simultaneously, not sequentially. The timeframes don’t mean “do this later” — they represent how long it takes for each type of project to mature and contribute to the bottom line.

The good news: You probably already have intrapreneurs in your organization. The challenge is identifying them and creating an environment where they can thrive.

The Five Characteristics of Successful Intrapreneurs

1. Curiosity: This is the only trait present in every successful innovator. They constantly question the status quo and spot opportunities others miss. They’re always asking “why” and “what if.”

2. Action orientation: They don’t just think about ideas — they build prototypes, run experiments, and learn from failure quickly. They have a bias toward doing rather than planning endlessly.

3. Bridge-building: This is what separates intrapreneurs from entrepreneurs. They excel at collaboration, gaining buy-in from finance, legal, operations, and other departments. They speak everyone’s language.

4. Risk tolerance: They’re willing to put their professional reputation on the line for something they believe in. They can handle setbacks without giving up.

5. Grounded optimism: They maintain clear vision and work through difficult times while staying connected to reality. They’re neither blindly optimistic nor defeatist.

How to Find Them

• Look for the “frustrated fixers”: These are the employees who complain about problems but immediately follow up with potential solutions. They’re not just critics — they’re problem-solvers looking for permission to act.
• Watch for continual learners: During interviews and performance reviews, identify people who pursue projects and learning on their own time. They’re teaching themselves new skills because they’re curious, not because they were told to.
• Create space for experimentation: Consider formalizing “exploration time;” perhaps one Friday per month allow employees to experiment with new ideas or technologies without the pressure of immediate deliverables.

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