What Is Exactly The Aurora Intrapreneurship Program
And why it is so important for our future.
“And then the Aurora Fellow joins the company for a period of 15 days, working side by side with a Manager …”
“Oh well, it’s a reverse mentoring relation, basically …”
We were waiting for you right here, as impassive as Kurtz in the jungle of Apocalypse now.
Aurora’s Intrapreneurship Program is not comparable to reverse mentoring.
With the promise to subtract 3 minutes from your daily activities, we tell you why.
Let’s start from the common points:
- In both programs there is a conflict between the parties (mentor and mentee) that is constructive and desired: as tectonic plates, they will give birth to new heights;
- In both programs there are moments of mutual distrust, typical of the processes of mutual knowledge and exchange of ideas.
First we define reverse mentoring, which is particular because:
- It aims to transfer new skills to the company senior profiles;
- The mentoring partners are chosen according to the similarity of their competences and interests;
- It is generally focused on specific skills (classic example: the junior figure teaches the senior manager how to use a new tool);
- It is usually part of the corporate programs and is intended as an exclusively internal path;
- Occasionally, when it’s intended as an exchange between companies, the activity takes place in a few hours.
Then we talk about Aurora’s Intrapreneurship Program:
- Its goal is ambitious: we want managers to become entrepreneurs, so as to live at ease with uncertainty;
- The mentoring partners are not chosen according to the similarity of their competences, but according to the positive feelings and trust that arise between them;
- Fellow and manager work together acquiring and transferring a new corporate culture, oriented towards the issues and needs of the next century;
- It starts during Q1, when Fellow and manager meet thanks to the speed dates held during the event, and have the opportunity to get to know each other personally;
- The Fellows collaborate with three companies a year, for a maximum of 15 days with each company, to prevent their innovative charge from running out due to the daily routine.
Therefore reverse mentoring and Aurora Intrapreneurship Program have significant differences.
Reverse mentoring is based on the exchange of skills.
The Intrapreneurship Program, on the other hand, promotes activities that bring the managerial culture closer to a culture of the 21st century, which does not focus on skills, but on attitudes and habits.
The generational conflict is avoided thanks to the atmosphere in which the confrontation takes place: neither the Fellow nor the manager has an advantage based on competences.
In 15 days the Fellows join the company managers, playing the role of the sparring partners, challenging the managers’ habits and assumptions, pushing them to make entrepreneurial choices, so that organizations can be ready to acquire the benefits of the 21st century culture:
- A distributed leadership;
- Real-time data;
- Continuous feedback;
- Rapid iteration cycle to validate hypotheses;
- Constant experiments.
The Aurora Fellows, young women and men between 18 and 23 years old, travel the world to overcome their limits and to constantly cross new thresholds.
Are you ready to meet them?
Get in touch with us to participate in Q1, Aurora’s annual event.
Or book a short interview with Alberto Garrone, Corporate Relationship Manager, to discuss how to start an Intrapreneurship Program within your company:
Text by Sebastiano Afeltra — Translation by Chiara Castelli
