Corporate Entrepreneurship Part 1 — Navigating corporate innovation

Corporate entrepreneurship is the practice of encouraging entrepreneurial behaviour — innovation, risk-taking, and new idea generation — within an established organisation. Instead of waiting for innovation to come from the top or from a dedicated R&D team, you create an environment where anyone in the business can surface and develop new ideas.

The best-known example is Google's famous "20% time" policy, where engineers were encouraged to spend a fifth of their work time on side projects. Gmail and Google Maps were both born from this programme. But you do not need Google's resources to apply the same principle.

The same structures that make a large business efficient also make it resistant to change. Approval processes, risk-averse culture, short-term financial targets, and the sheer weight of "the way we do things here" can all work against innovation.

There is also a deeper problem: successful businesses tend to optimise for what already works. That is rational in the short term. But it means they often miss emerging opportunities until a newer, more agile competitor has already taken the lead.

Before any system or programme, corporate entrepreneurship starts with culture. Your team needs to genuinely believe it is safe to bring new ideas — including ones that challenge how things are currently done. If the last person who suggested a new approach was shot down in a meeting or made to feel naive, no one else will bother.

Leaders need to actively invite new thinking, respond to ideas with curiosity rather than immediate criticism, and visibly celebrate experiments — even ones that did not pan out. You are not just looking for good ideas. You are building a culture where good ideas feel welcome.

Every organisation has people who naturally think this way — who see problems as opportunities, who sketch out better ways of doing things on their lunch break, who are always asking "what if we tried it this way instead?" These people often go unrecognised because their thinking does not fit neatly into their job description.

Start by identifying these individuals. Give them a little time, a small budget if possible, and an audience. You do not need a formal programme to start. You just need to signal that this kind of thinking is valued here.