Introducing intrapreneurship at business school

A business school recently asked me to teach a course on intrapreneurship. Happy to share my experience, I said yes. They had already had courses on entrepreneurship and design thinking, among others. But teaching intrapreneurship to students who may have no experience of working in a company seemed tricky to me. It is a bit like explaining to a marmot how to fly. It can understand, but it won’t get much out of it and will hardly ever put it into practice.

For me, they had to live the experience of intrapreneurship within their own context and constraints: those of the school.

So that is what I offered them in the first class: to make them the actors of their own course, defining its scope and their learning path. And for me, to step out of the expert’s role and into the guide’s.

Together, they defined the main themes they wanted to learn about on this subject. Then, in small teams, each chose one of the themes to dig into, make their own and present back.

The goal we set: write a short white paper on intrapreneurship together. And present it to people working in innovation at an event we are going to organise.

Now their path of research, discovery and exploration begins: visiting corporate labs, searching the internet, interviewing the people who drive innovation in companies. Understanding what is at stake, why intrapreneurship, the keys to success, what works, what doesn’t, and illustrating all of it with living examples. Synthesising and sharing.

So this flipped classroom is an experiment in itself. For the students and for me. I hope it will give interesting results.

If you want to know what happens next, join us on 20 December for the presentation. A few places are left at this Conference on Intrapreneurship.