Social Intrapreneurship: Driving Change from the Inside
The Case for Social Intrapreneurship
Remolding the current profit-maximization model into a form of capitalism that equally prioritizes social and environmental values requires change to be driven from both the top-down and bottom-up. Small entrepreneurs, large enterprises, and every actor in between need to take stewardship of this transformation. Large enterprises can be pivotal agents of change by leveraging their embeddedness in national and global value chains, as well as in becoming role models for other stakeholders. The innovation and transformations these large enterprises lead can be in large part driven from within, particularly through providing a platform for leaders and forward-thinking employees who we call “Social Intrapreneurs” to be supported.
Social business can be a key mechanism to empower such internal actors, harnessing their potential to develop new products, services, and business models that mutually creates value for customers, society, the environment, and the company alike.
Driving Change from Inside
Yunus Thailand has continued to work with companies in Thailand to realize value beyond profits, whether through supporting the development of capable and socially-conscious future leaders, engaging executives in social business, or co-designing financially sustainable models for impact.
In 2021, Yunus Thailand worked with CP Group to engage future leaders in the company in social business to represent their organization and Thailand on the international stage at the One Young World Summit. In the second iteration of the program which was piloted in 2020, the participating employees represented the second cohort of young leaders within the organization supported by YT to learn, design, and realize internally-driven social business projects. From a practical perspective, employees learned how to identify a social problem and analyze their target market, how to build multi-stakeholder value propositions and social impact frameworks, as well as design thinking, lean business design and social business KPIs.
Who Cares Wins
Providing a platform for social intrapreneurship can have far-reaching benefits. Within the organization, engaging employees in intrapreneurship can improve job satisfaction, talent retention, and lead to positive mindset shifts. These benefits on the individual-scale have the potential to lead to the culture changes and internal corporate transformations necessary to drive real business innovation and create shared-value. New markets, new customer segments, new business models are only a few examples of the value intrapreneurs can bring. Through embracing social intrapreneurs, companies can become pioneers in their own industry and more importantly, leaders in the movement to create a new form of capitalism.
contact person: Callum Mackenzie (email : callum@yunus-thailand.org)