Entrepreneurship brings employees together and promotes recognition of their ideas (Photo: Compassionate Eye Foundation/Mark Langridge/Getty Images)
In Brazil, there are still a few companies that create specific programs to encourage internal entrepreneurship. According to GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor), less than 1% of employees work as in-house entrepreneurs in the country. A very low figure compared to 8% in countries like the UK and Australia.
One of the companies that has a dedicated area for internal business is sorry, which launched AgroStart Garagem in 2018. Employees of all levels and departments can submit their ideas in two annual calls. Interviews help determine the best options.
During the three-month programme, selected employees learn to understand the problem they want to solve, validate hypotheses, apply methodology, and develop prototypes. An example is the company’s WhatsApp chatbot, which answers seller questions instantly – before that, the process took at least five days.
In addition to bringing innovation to the company, internal entrepreneurship helps engage and learn about employees. “The project brings the employees together,” says Almir Araujo, New Business Models director for BASF in Latin America. “In addition, it is an opportunity for the employee to gain a favorable proposition and gain prominence in the organization.”
Objective challenges
Another company that developed a support mechanism for in-house entrepreneurs was MRV. Created in 2020, Inova MRV aims to organize employee ideas from start to finish. They sign up for themed challenges; If their proposals are approved, they will have four hours a week to devote to developing it. At the end of the program, they receive prizes with a value of up to 1.5 million R$.
“Through this program, we want to impact employees, customers, and society through innovation,” says Philip Reis, the company’s director of innovation. An example of a proposal featured by Inova MRV is the manufacture of sustainable uniforms. , which had been suggested by a construction assistant before that, due to contact with chemical products, the clothes were discarded after use, and today they are made of a durable material that can be washed and reused.
Although it is an informal practice at Intel, internal entrepreneurship has crystallized in the company in the past three years. To realize its importance, the company has established a new pillar in the corporate culture, called “Courageous Innovation”.
“No fear” because the company reassures employees that there is room for error in their attempts. “We have a quarterly bug bounty, for that group that tried to do it and got it wrong,” says Carolina Prado, director of communications at Intel Brazil. “This learning is shared by everyone. If you want to innovate, you have to accept failure. Successful projects appear after the first mistakes.”
At Intel, the idea that was born in this way was the circular economy programme, to reduce the waste of electronic products. The project was developed by a group of employees from different regions, who brought together different methodologies and had the support of the internal committee to finalize the proposal.
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