Although almost everyone is familiar with the term entrepreneurship, the same cannot be said for the term intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship and the intrapreneur have entered the business vocabulary quite recently, but in a short time have managed to attract interest in business and corporate environments, especially in the leading sector and industry of ICT. Intrapreneurs are employees within a c
ompany who think and act as entrepreneurs. They share a company’s goals, are aware of their capabilities to contribute to these goals, and eventually are determined to take direct responsibility for realizing ideas within a corporate environment by taking risk and being innovative. Intrapreneurship can be loosely defined as any entrepreneurial activity performed within an organization, taking advantage of the untapped potential and talent that already exist within organizations. The EU co-funded project Intraprise – ‘Infusing entrepreneurial skills in the corporate ICT environment’ is setting out to develop an intrapreneurial training program which will assist managers and employees in ICT companies in effectively adopting and realising an intrapreneurial culture within the organisational settings of ICT companies. Certain key elements will be considered in developing the training provision, and in particular, the aspects of managers and employees as they are positioned in diverse organisational structures, as well as the overall organisational structure as a ‘way of doing things’ within a company. Intraprise will develop an intrapreneurial training program framework based on well-documented management practices, organisational structures and existing intrapreneurial training practices. A specific training course curriculum will be designed and learning material will be offered as a training provision through an online e-learning platform. Separate workshops will be held in Cyprus, Belgium, Greece, Italy, and Spain presenting the training material to selected ICT companies, while further on, 10-20 participants in each country will be offered the opportunity to use and test the learning provision over a period of approximately 3 months. The whole process will be monitored and evaluated, leading eventually to the optimisation of the Intraprise Course on Intrapreneurship for the ICT sector.
