Anyone who considers themselves an intrapreneur should have a couple of skunkworks going on. It’s a win-win situation.
I’m not talking about organizational skunkworks (in which an entire division is dedicated to a secret project). I’m talking about personal, individual, and intrapreneurial skunkworks.
I keep a long list of new ideas in front of me at all times. I write down things that I think would be really cool to work on. They usually have nothing to do with the quarterly goals that I have, which are also in front of me at all times. My quarterly goals have to do with delivering on my business unit’s core product.
Every once in a while I’ll have a few spare minutes and pluck an idea out of the “new” column and promote it to the level of “skunkworks”. I’ll send out a few emails to people and see if they want to collaborate on the idea. My management chain may or may not be in the loop.
Why is this a win-win?
A Personal Win
I have about four skunkworks going on right now. All of them involve reaching out to someone in a new group that I don’t know. That’s a personal benefit for me. All of the ideas have been promoted from the “that-would-be-cool-to-do” list. This makes me look forward to coming in to work. That’s another personal benefit. And finally, when the skunkworks gets unveiled, there is the potential for recognition and reward based on creativite initiative.
Now, there’s always the possibility that someone in my management chain may ask “why did you waste your time on that?”, or “shouldn’t you have been working on your quarterly goals instead?”. The potential for this situation is greatly minimized by practicing the core mantra of an intrapreneur: get your core goals done early and with the highest quality. No manager can argue with that (and if they do, it might be time to find a more innovative company or manager).
A Corporate Win
From a corporate standpoint, the more intrapreneurs that are exceeding their goals and skunk-working, the better.
Steve Shapiro makes this point wonderfully in one of his blog posts from the Blogging Innovation website. In his article “Why Edison Was Wrong”, he describes an interview with InnoCentive founder Alph Bingham. After reading the article I believe that Steve’s point is consistent with my belief about skunkworks projects.
If a corporation assigns innovation responsibility to “ivory tower organizations”, it’s quite possible that researchers are making a series of “experimentation mistakes” that will eventually lead to a feasible product offering. Steve references a quote by Thomas Edison that is often used to justify this type of innovation:
in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated
the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
The problem with this approach is that it increases “time-to-market”. Incremental mistakes take time to correct.
What if the researchers were actually distributed intrapreneurs working in parallel on skunkwork solutions to a common problem? Could it be that some of them would make mistakes, while some would get it right on the first try? If some of them are right on the first try, then the solutions could potentially be brought to market earlier.
There’s very little a corporation can do to stop someone from firing up their own skunkworks. It would be easier, however, if it was an acknowledged part of the corporate culture.
For individuals, it’s simple to get started. Start making your list. When you find an opportunity to collaborate on a skunkworks with someone you’ve never worked with before, take it.
Make sure you get your core work done, because as I have mentioned, it is the key behavior. There’s one more important strategy to keep in mind. You’ll need a contingency plan that you need to have in case your skunkworks is discovered early.
It’s called apologize later.
Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd
