By Gerald F. Davis & Christopher J. White
The advent of social media and big
data have made information about
government increasingly accessible.
Actions and policies that might once
have been private can now be discovered
and publicized broadly—for
instance, the mass US government
surveillance program revealed by
Edward Snowden. The same technologies
also allow activists to mobilize mass support
for social change, as we saw during the Arab Spring.
Social activists are not only taking on government
policies, but also, increasingly, putting companies in
the spotlight. Starbucks, for example, experienced an
unwanted nationwide “Starbucks Appreciation Day”
in August 2013, featuring visits from visibly armed gun
owners supporting Starbucks’ stance on “open carry”—a position the company subsequently reversed due to
the response of the public, and its own employees, to
the event. Applebee’s faced an online social movement
in support of a restaurant hostess who was fired after
posting a non-tipping customer’s bill, which ultimately
accumulated thousands of negative posts on social
media. And the new CEO of Mozilla was forced to step
down after his prior financial support for California’s
Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, inspired
protests inside and outside of the company.
Although boycotts and other protests organized by
outsiders have been around for years, today employees
are among the most vocal activists for change. Employees
at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler persuaded
the companies they worked for to adopt domestic partner
benefits equivalent to those available to straight
employees. Internal activists have pressed companies
to reduce their carbon footprints. And Nike cut off ties
to suppliers in Bangladesh when they were found to be
unsafe, due in large part to employee activists.
Company employees have many reasons to become
social intrapreneurs. They have a more sustained
interaction with the companies that they work for
than do most customers or investors. Moreover, their
identity is often at stake in the company’s policies and
reputation. Anyone who has worked at an organization
experiencing a scandal (or even a bad football
season) knows that where you work can be a potent
source of scrutiny. And millennials are more likely
than older workers to be concerned about the social
impact of the company for which they work, and also
more willing to express those concerns.
Corporations can get ahead of potential protests
by being amenable to employee-led movements rather
than shutting them down. Employees are likely to be
much more in touch with social issues affecting their
company than are top executives. Organizations that
let their employees’ voices be heard without being
stifled by “corporate antibodies” will gain an advantage
in responding prospectively and thoughtfully to
controversies, rather than in response to a boycott or
social media storm.
Corporations can also benefit from internal social
movements. The choices a company makes on social
issues can have an impact on its ability to recruit new employees, particularly millennials. Creating an environment conducive
to grassroots social innovation can also unlock new levels
of employee engagement, ideation, and impact, outcomes that are
especially desirable in this era of flattening hierarchies and social-media-powered brands.
Social Intrapreneurs ≈ Social Activists
Although many people assume that social activists and social intrapreneurs
are different, we have found in our research that they
actually have a lot in common. Social intrapreneurs (who rarely use
that label to describe themselves) have to do the following: understand
the context and timing of their initiative to make sure that it
fits with the organization’s priorities; frame their ideas in ways that
are culturally appropriate and fit with the audience; locate and recruit
appropriate allies and sponsors; and use the appropriate tools
to organize their initiative. Much the same is true for social activists,
from those who were involved in the civil rights movement to
those involved in the more recent Occupy movement. In fact, social
intrapreneurs and social activists have a lot to learn from each other,
especially in the current climate of technology-enhanced activism.
Social activists and social intrapreneurs both operate without
the benefit of formal institutional authority in their quest to create
what they perceive to be positive change. Social activists campaign
for social change by defining the issue, gathering allies, and advancing
their cause through a variety of methods.1 Sometimes it might
be a petition, other times a rally, and on other occasions a boycott.
Social intrapreneurs, on the other hand, lead change within their
own organizations by aligning their social or environmental cause
with the company’s core business objectives.
Although social activists and intrapreneurs are alike in many ways,
the analogy is imperfect. The two main differences between activists
and intrapreneurs derive from the contexts in which they operate.
First, by operating predominantly in communities (whether online or
offline), activists typically have a much broader network of potential
constituents and stakeholders than do intrapreneurs operating within
organizations. Second, the consequences of upsetting those in power
can be markedly different for activists and intrapreneurs. While an
intrapreneur who falls into disfavor with an intransigent company
risks losing her job, an activist who falls into disfavor with a corrupt
or undemocratic government risks losing her life.
It is for this reason that Stanford University professor Debra
Meyerson cast intrapreneurs as “tempered radicals.” “They occupy all
sorts of jobs and stand up for a variety of ideals. They engage in small
battles, at times operating so quietly that they may not surface on the
cultural radar as ‘rebels.’ By pushing back on conventions, they create
opportunities for change within their organizations. They are not heroic
leaders of revolutionary action; rather, they are cautious and committed
catalysts that keep going and who slowly make a difference.”2
Impact of Social Intrapreneurs
There are many ways that a social intrapreneur can change her
company’s policies and actions and the impact that the company
has on the environment and society. The four principal ways are
influencing the types of products and services that the company
offers, its practices, the way it manages people, and its engagement
with the community.
Products and services | When Nick Hughes was head of Global
Payments at Vodafone he began to advocate for a new service called
M-Pesa, Vodafone’s pioneering mobile-phone-based money transfer
and microfinance service. Getting the initiative to market required
a deep understanding of the customer, innovative use of technology,
and great skill in navigating a complex organization. Indeed,
Hughes initially had difficulty securing support from key organizational
leaders in Vodafone’s product development and approval
processes. In the early stages it took much intrapreneurial effort—and creative funding strategies—to accelerate the progress of MPesa.
By getting the support of a small number of senior executives,
Hughes was able to piece together a proposal for nearly $1 million in
seed funding from the UK Government’s Department for International
Development, which was subsequently matched by Vodafone.
Today, the service has spread to Kenya, Tanzania, Afghanistan, South
Africa, India, and Eastern Europe. M-Pesa has expanded the services
Vodafone and its partners can offer to its customers, while extending
access to financial services to millions of people who were previously
unbanked. Among other contributions, M-Pesa has been praised for
reducing crime in primarily cash based local economies.3
Practices | S. C. Johnson & Son is a privately owned company that
sells household cleaning products around the world. Five generations
of the Johnson family have run the company since Samuel Curtis
Johnson Sr. founded the firm in 1886. When Justin DeKoszmovszky
worked at S. C. Johnson, he created a program to buy pyrethrum
(a flower used in insecticides) from farmers in Rwanda. By creating
a stable market for the crop, DeKoszmovszky helped Rwandan
farmers increase production and increase their income. At the same
time, S. C. Johnson secured a steady supply of pyrethrum for its
products. The program developed because of DeKoszmovszky’s
initiative, but his path was eased because the family owned and led company was open to intrapreneurial efforts, particularly
those that lead to improving the impact that the company has on
the environment. Indeed, S. C. Johnson’s chairman Fisk Johnson
has spoken openly about his efforts to balance the competing priorities
of profit and planet that the company faced when removing
chlorine from its product line.
People | Ron Jimmerson, a social intrapreneur at Cascade Engineering,
worked with the CEO to develop a program to help longterm
welfare recipients transition into the workforce, a program
that was good for the participants, good for Cascade, and good for
the state of Michigan, where Cascade is headquartered. The program
has helped Cascade recruit new employees, reduce employee
turnover, and strengthen the corporate culture as a whole. The
program illustrates the circuitous path that many social innovations
take before becoming adopted. The first iteration of the program,
providing bus service to help participants get to work, was unsuccessful. It turned out that lack of transportation was not the
reason former welfare recipients had difficulty getting and holding
a job. The idea lay dormant for several years, until version two of
the program was piloted. It provided an entry job at a local Burger
King, and for those who held that job for a specified period of time,
a full-time position at Cascade. The second iteration foundered too
because the fast-food job did not pay enough, so people quit before
they could progress to a job at Cascade. Again, the program took a
hiatus. Finally, in the third iteration, the program succeeded when
Cascade hired a full-time social worker to help the participants navigate
the diverse and complex challenges that arise when transitioning
from welfare into full-time employment. The program has since
been replicated by other companies, especially in western Michigan.
Its proliferation—and Cascade’s catalytic
role—was recognized by Michigan governor
Rick Snyder in his 2015 State of the
State speech: “We’ve now placed 3,000
people in over 100 companies, with over
70 percent retention. It’s made a huge
difference in peoples’ lives.”4
Public engagement | IBM has long been
known as a company that knows how to
identify and train its own executive talent.
But it wasn’t until Kevin Thompson
came up with a proposal for what could
be described as a corporate Peace Corps
that IBM brought those skills to the
community. IBM’s Corporate Service
Corps places high-potential employees
with NGOs and governments in developing
countries, providing services that these
organizations could not otherwise afford. What started out as a
social intrapreneur’s somewhat wacky idea has grown to become
one of IBM’s strategic initiatives. When Thompson first raised
the idea, the response was lukewarm at best. Only when IBM’s
chairman at the time, Sam Palmisano, laid out his vision for a
globally integrated enterprise and issued a call for supporting
programs, did Thompson find support for his initiative. The
program has been a success, even being named one of the 100
stories of innovation from IBM’s first 100 years. According to
IBM’s website, “Since its launch in 2008, the Corporate Service
Corps has had a positive impact on the lives of more than
140,000 people outside of IBM through skills transfer and capacity
building. Many thousands more have been positively
impacted through the services of the organizations the Corporate
Service Corps has supported. The Corporate Service
Corps program has sent over 2,500 participants on over 250
teams to more than 30 countries around the world.”
Playbook for Successful Intrapreneurship
Social movement scholars have identified a number of factors
that distinguish successful movements from less successful
ones.5 These same factors can serve as a guide to help social
intrapreneurs be more effective within their own companies.
Conveniently, these factors correspond to four questions:
When? Why? Who? and How?
When? | The first factor describes the prevailing conditions
within which innovation and change can occur. Whether one is
trying to change an organization or a society, timing and context
matter. Time and again we see that even obviously good ideas do
not necessarily get adopted just because they are better. For example,
putting wheels on luggage seems like a natural and significant
product improvement. Yet it did not catch hold for many years due
to hesitancy from potential customers who were worried that “real
men carry their bags.”
In a corporate setting, the company’s strategy, structure, and
culture are the context for innovations and set boundaries around
what is possible. Today, organizational change agents have more
information at their fingertips than ever before—including about
the company in which they are working. An afternoon spent browsing
the US Security and Exchange
Commission’s EDGAR website can
provide savvy intrapreneurs with
valuable insights. For example,
Nike disclosed in its 2014 US Securities
and Exchange Commission
10-K filing that one of its risk
factors is “significant or continuing
noncompliance with such standards
and laws by one or more contractors
[which] could harm our reputation
or result in a product recall and, as
a result, could have an adverse effect
on our sales and financial condition.”
This is a signal of opportunity for activists
who want to improve worker
conditions in the low-income countries
where garments are typically manufactured.6
Or consider Pfizer’s annual shareholder proxy statement
for 2014, used to solicit votes for the company’s annual meeting
The statement describes Pfizer’s four strategic “imperatives,” including
“Earning greater respect from society,” and it notes the
company’s efforts are focused on “successful aging” and providing
affordable medicines to the uninsured—promising signs for
intrapreneurs focused on issues such as health, well-being, social
inclusion, and economic inequality. It also notes that the loss of
patent protection for some of Pfizer’s blockbuster drugs caused
a $7.4 billion operating loss, suggesting that this might not be the
most promising time to advocate for costly philanthropy. Similarly,
activists can explore Glassdoor.com (a job listing website)
to find out which organizational culture issues are most pressing
for their company, and start to align intrapreneurial initiatives in
a way that will attract greater interest from senior management.
Why? | The second factor refers to the way in which the stories
and language used to convey the proposed change are framed.
Intrapreneurs often find that storytelling is an invaluable skill for
getting their initiatives a sympathetic hearing. For a story to lead
to change, however, it needs to be tied to the company’s culture,
values, and priorities.
Much can be gleaned about a company’s culture by astute observation.
But there are shortcuts to decoding organizational culture.
The choice of language used within the organization, for example, provides a window into the values and principles upon which the
company culture rests. By analyzing corporate documents, such as
recruiting materials and annual reports, an intrapreneur can get a
sense of the kind of organization that he works for, and the language
and rhetorical devices most likely to be influential.
Northwestern University professor Klaus Weber has documented
the various “management logics” at play in organizations. A company
with a “family logic,” for instance, would likely be more receptive to
language that emphasizes harmony, tradition, solidarity, endurance,
experience, leadership, virtue, wisdom, and legacy. At a company
with a “market logic,” in contrast, other qualities might resonate,
such as competition, demand, winning, price, wealth, fortune, economics,
entrepreneurship, and venture.
Information technology tools can help with storytelling. Software
for content analysis ranges from the very simple (and free) to
the complicated (and more expensive). One example is Yoshikoder,
a free program that uses word counts to identify the most prevalent
terms in documents that can then be matched with profiles of corporate
cultures. When teaching our MBA students, we combine the
rudimentary Yoshikoder software
with a dictionary Weber developed
to diagnose the kind of management
logic in use. The number of
software tools for change agents is
still small, but the next generation
of intrapreneurs may well use a suite
of apps to support their navigation
of the organizational system.
Who? | The third factor is the network
of people and organizations
that the intrapreneur must enlist to
create change. Both decision makers
and the system around them need
to be on board in order for an intrapreneur
to have the best chance of
success. Networks are critical for recruiting
allies for an initiative, gathering information, locating
sponsors for legitimation, and generating momentum through
contagion. Through Facebook and LinkedIn, most people are
familiar with the idea of social network analysis. The tools of
network analysis are now much more accessible than they were
just a few years ago. Anyone who can use Excel can be systematic
in locating well-connected players and mavens in an organization.
With two afternoons of training on a free Excel plug-in
called NodeXL, people can learn the necessary skills for network
analysis and apply them to create an analysis that 20 years ago
would have constituted a multiyear doctoral dissertation project.
Network data can also be gathered informally, by seeing who
reports to whom, who have worked together on projects or with
common clients, or who eat lunch together. More systematic network
data can come from sources like Twitter followers, LinkedIn
contacts, membership in affinity groups or alumni clubs, participation
in task forces, and email distribution lists.
Once you have the network data, the question becomes: what
can you do with it? One of the important things that the data can
tell you is who is “central” or important in the network. This is
useful for recruiting allies who will be good at persuading others.
There are six different types of centrality:
Degree: the number of contacts (e.g., how many friends you have).
In-degree: the number of times you are a target of a relation
(e.g., how many people seek you out for advice).
Out-degree: the number of times you are a sender of a relation
(e.g., how many people you seek for advice).
Closeness: how few steps it takes to reach everyone else. This
can also be measured as average distance (the average shortest
path to everyone else in the network).
Betweenness: the number of times you are on the shortest
path between every other pair of nodes in the network.
Eigenvector: similar to Google’s PageRank, it measures the
extent to which those you are connected to are themselves
well connected.
Network data can also show you the shortest path to decision makers.
A visual map of a social network makes it clear whom you should
approach to help recruit decision makers.
How? | The fourth factor is about the
technological, social, and physical systems
that can be used to mobilize action.
Networks of African-American churches
in the South, for example, were an essential
part of the c ivil r ights movement,
providing a (relatively) safe space to convene
and a communications network for
support. Twitter, Facebook, and other
social media now play a critical role
in mobilizing movements inside and
outside of organizations. Tactics such
as “die-ins,” aimed at highlighting the
lack of oversight in police behavior toward
racial minorities, rapidly go viral.
Similarly, employee groups can provide
a way for allies of an innovation to show their support. Of
course, the tactics used by social activists will often look very
different from those used by social intrapreneurs. Employee
groups self-organizing to improve environmental sustainability
outcomes in their company, dubbed Green Teams, will look very
different from traditional social movement tactics like boycotts.
Social movements in recent times have often been distinguished
by their use of social media to share information and
tactics and to organize events. The protests in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square that precipitated the ouster of Egyptian president Hosni
Mubarak were largely organized on a Facebook page, “We are
all Khaled Said,” created by a Google executive working in the
country at the time. There is no question that information and
communication technologies greatly reduce the transaction
costs for coordinated action, making it easier to mount protests.
Yet the same technology can also be used to track down
dissidents and their collaborators.
In a corporate setting, we would urge caution before using
the company’s e-mail or intranet to launch potentially controversial
initiatives. In most US states employees can still be
fired for being gay, for example. In principle, an unscrupulous
HR office could use information from a Facebook affinity page for
discriminatory purposes. This may be one of those cases where apps
like Yik Yak that allow people to communicate anonymously—on
your personal phone, not the company’s—might be useful.
These four factors—when, why, who, and how—provide a guide
for activists inside and outside of companies. Although our informants
over the past five years have predominantly worked in forprofit
corporations, we have reason to think the skills are transferable
to working in nonprofit organizations as well. Indeed, perhaps
because of the intense bureaucracy and extensive regulation of certain
kinds of nonprofits, the skills needed to exert influence within
organizations may be even more valuable than in a corporate setting.
The Hazards of Corporate Activism
We have spoken with dozens of successful social intrapreneurs who
have seen their innovations taken up by their own companies, and
sometimes spread to other firms. But other intrapreneurs have found
that their efforts were not always appreciated by company executives.
The reasons that companies reject corporate activists’ efforts
are many and varied. Social intrapreneurship is generally outside
of a person’s job description, and some managers may ask, “If you
have time for this, why aren’t you putting more effort into your day
job?” In other instances, resistance to social initiatives can take the
form of demanding that intrapreneurs “make the business case”
for their proposals. Ironically, corporate social responsibility programs
have in some instances generated their own backlash in the
form of cynicism toward corporate initiatives that appear as mere
public relations.
There are also risks in becoming a social intrapreneur. The
information technology that makes activism easier also makes it
easier for corporations to monitor employee activities in ways that
can verge on the Orwellian. Although the revelations about the US
National Security Agency’s monitoring of e-mail and phone traffic
were unsettling, employers have far more intrusive means of tracking
activists. Software is readily available to continuously monitor
e-mails, phone calls, and text messages. Whatever you do on the
company’s premises, or using the company’s phone, computer, or
e-mail server, are fair game.
In the financial services industry, for example, compliance management
can include analyzing the content and emotional tone of
communications, looking for patterns in the “To” and “From” lines
in e-mails, and assessing employee networks for suspicious groupings.
Of course, the activities of social intrapreneurs—such as breaking
down silos to gather supporters to support a new initiative—can
look highly suspicious to an algorithm. And nonstandard e-mails
can get social intrapreneurs flagged for a visit by HR.
The Tide Is with Social Intrapreneurs
In spite of the hazards of being an activist within a company, we believe
that the tide of history is with social intrapreneurs. Today, we are
seeing exciting developments on issues such as raising the minimum
wage. Aetna’s bold step to raise the wages of its lowest-paid employees
was laudable. And now even a traditionally late adopter like Wal-Mart
is taking steps to raise the wages of its store employees. Although not
yet ubiquitous, social impact initiatives are increasing and have the
potential to spread across companies and geographies.
Take, for example, domestic partner benefits for LGBT employees.
When Lotus Development adopted this benefit in 1992, it was the
first US public corporation to do so. At the time, domestic partner
benefits were a fairly radical idea, and only a handful of firms, typically
in creative or technology industries, were willing to adopt them.
The reasons for caution were many. Would the benefits be expensive?
Would they alienate customers? Would they alienate straight employees?
Even some companies that explicitly marketed to the gay
community were wary of providing benefits to domestic partners.
Now consider domestic partner benefits from the perspective
of a social intrapreneur at the time. The idea was unfamiliar and
potentially risky. Being identified as an activist was not necessarily
a great career move. And finding allies within the company posed
risks. At that time it was legal in most states to fire employees for
being gay, so there could be real costs for being an out supporter. Yet
the costs for failing to adopt were quite vivid to the many families
who lacked sufficient health insurance and legal rights.
Through the efforts of social intrapreneurs, who often shared
best practices across companies, more and more companies followed
Lotus’s lead and adopted domestic partner benefits. And in 1999,
General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, through the efforts of the United
Automobile Workers union, all adopted the benefit. These benefits
had now tipped from being radical to being relatively mainstream.
By 2013 even Wal-Mart—America’s largest employer by far—was
compelled to adopt domestic partner benefits after finding that it
was almost the last large retailer to do so. The early actions of social
intrapreneurs ultimately changed the shape of corporate America
and its standards about whose families count.7
The world changes, and business has to change as well. Companies
that fail to reflect the social values and priorities of their workforce
and their customers are unlikely to thrive. Information about
companies and their policies is increasingly transparent. Customers
can now use the Buycott app to scan bar codes and determine if the
product they are considering buying aligns with their values, from
labor practices to whether it contains GMOs. The political contributions
that sank the career of Mozilla’s erstwhile CEO are public
record and easily accessible. Smart companies will enable their employees
to help guide them on these important social issues, a role
for which social intrapreneurs are well suited.