Learn, Earn, AND Return: Social Intrapreneurship Part 1
By Olivia Bryant
“Learn, earn, and then return” — You’ve probably heard this saying before. It’s based on the idea that life can be divided into thirds. The first third is a time to learn as much from the world as possible; the middle third should be dedicated to creating a successful career; and the final third is a time to reinvest your wealth & wisdom into future generations.
Now I know I’m often accused of trying to do way too much, but the idea of prioritizing life in this way leaves me completely bemused! And no more so than when it comes to philanthropy. You’re telling me I have to wait until I retire to properly ‘give back’ to the world?!!
I want to throw an idea out there — social intrapreneurship. Before properly introducing this concept, I will share a bit about myself.
I love to give back; it’s a core part of who I am. I’ve volunteered with amazing organizations focusing on a wide-range of cause areas from promoting international women’s rights, to fighting human trafficking and more recently creating opportunities for Millennials to drive social change.
I volunteer for others, but also for myself; I gain so much through feeling like I’m contributing to something bigger than my everyday activities.
In my junior year at college, I faced a dilemma. Given my passion for social impact work, should I start my career in the nonprofit sector or the private sector? I spent many days, which turned into weeks and months fretting over this dilemma. What made matters worse was everyone telling me that the job I had lined up would leave little time for anything else, especially for the nonprofit I was (and still am) deeply involved in (check us out www.ycore.org). It seemed like it was one or the other — there was no middle ground.
During this time, I discovered that there are lots of ways for young professionals to continue giving back — corporate volunteering days, social impact hackathons, short-term volunteering gigs etc. But these didn’t satisfy my desire to create high-impact social change. I wanted to go a step further. This led me to the idea of social intrapreneurship.
The word “intrapreneur” is often used to describe someone who innovates and catalyzes change from within a company (it is a play on the more the common term entrepreneur).
So a “social intrapreneur” is someone who drives social change from within a company.
Being a ‘social intrapreneur’ is not easy as social innovation is often seen as secondary to a company’s main line of work. Companies are happy to host volunteer days and maybe do a longer pro-bono project with a nonprofit. But committing significant resources to affect broad social change is considered over the top.
I believe otherwise — in my opinion, companies that manage to align their core operations with the broader needs of society will increasingly differentiate themselves. Salesforce, Wholefoods and Unilever are companies that already proving this strategy. But it takes a few passionate individuals from within a company to think creatively about how to align the interests of the organization with those of society as a whole. This is the role of the social intrapreneur — an individual who believes that you can learn, earn and return all at once!!
In Part 2 of this blog, I will provide some examples of inspiring social intrapreneurs and my thoughts on what it takes to successfully drive social change from within a company…
