Entrepreneurship in a large company: the best and the worst of both worlds, the case of Sodexo

Being an entrepreneur inside a large company is both the best and the worst of both worlds.

That is what Yannick Villar, intrapreneur at Sodexo, says…

Yannick heads the Wx initiative: a project that aims to develop new services for Sodexo's clients and to speed up the transformation of the businesses within Sodexo. He tells us about his adventure, full of twists and turns.

At first, the strategy is to set up a joint venture with a real estate player to build a joint offer: real estate with the service. It is like offering the hardware (the real estate) and the software (Sodexo).

But the ambitions of the two players are not aligned and the project stalls…

In the end, the real estate group pulls out of the project and Yannick makes Wx change course.

Through his conversations, he starts advising some clients on managing their workspace. From there, he spots an opportunity: measuring how these workspaces are used in order to manage them better.

Capturing, analysing and reporting usage data for workspaces, offices, meeting rooms, etc., to optimise how they are used. That is what Yannick wants to offer. As Sodexo does not know how to do this, Yannick finds a startup that does: Connected Space Management.

So Yannick proposes to his management the acquisition of the missing technology that makes these measurements possible.

The proposal is eventually accepted, which confirms management's support for the Wx project.

Thanks to this capability, Wx grows, but the innovation runs into internal resistance.

Some find Wx's consulting activity too abstract compared with Sodexo's concrete services.
Others wonder why this activity is not simply sold as an add-on to the other services. Why make it an independent entity? Why have a separate contract?

In short, to make the interests of the small structure and those of Sodexo coexist, Yannick has to fight.

Hear the full story told by its main protagonist:

Or of course:

• On Apple Podcast
• On Google Podcast