Enabling Industry 4.0 by being an intrapreneur — disrupting from within the organisation
Industry 4.0 is often misinterpreted as a technological revolution, which is not completely true as the technologies that Industry 4.0 highlights have already been in existence and are being used in different industries over the last few years. Industry 4.0 in reality is about a cultural change, that the manufacturing industry has been in a dire need of.
For years the strategy for manufacturing industry has focused on efficiency and becoming lean. Now in the age of startups and disruptors, being lean is no longer enough. To be competitive, manufacturers, big or small, need to be ready to disrupt or be disrupted.
Manufacturers today need to enable cultural change in an industry which has always focused on efficiency and making incremental improvements to save cost, rather than to deliver higher value. In the age of digitisation the manufacturers who can embrace this, will have the power to shape their organisation’s future.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” — Peter F. Ducker.
Bringing in the innovation culture starts by first empowering your employees. As humans we like to be appreciated, its in our nature; we want to make an impact or just see our ideas convert to reality. This is not just applicable to entrepreneurs but also to intrapreneur (people who can act as entrepreneurs from within an organisation).
Being an intrapreneur is all about having the passion, the zeal and mindset of an entrepreneur but without limitations of a startup. Organisations who can promote the culture of intrapreneurship from within the organisation, will establish a culture that can get them leaps and bounds ahead of their competition.
The next big change that is needed is the necessity to celebrate failure. This is one of the most important mindset changes that is required, if organisations cannot accept that ideas will fail, the culture is already destined to fail. In today’s world it has become a necessity for even big organisations to adopt the culture of fail fast, and iterate or pivot.
“Move fast, break things” — Mark Zuckerberg
Adapting to a culture of innovation, is also something that is more easily achievable by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), due to the agility that their size can provide. But, very few SMEs actually understand this principle, and rather focus on incremental improvements. In relatively larger organisations, this becomes difficult to spread due to the complexity of the structure and the bigger population that needs to come on board with the culture change. Yet large organisations such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon are amongst many other market leaders who are adapting to this phenomenon in a phased manner over time.
To summarise, an organisation must take these steps to enable a change in innovation culture:
1. Create and promote intrapreneurship to disrupt from within the organisation.
2. Celebrate failure, iterate and pivot if necessary.
Nishant Raj : As Industry 4.0 lead , he looks at creating awareness on Industry 4.0 and the need for cultural change that digitisation requires manufacturers to adopt.
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