Intrapreneurship: Impacting existing organizations

Intrapreneurship is about the development and implementation of innovations in existing organizations. In short, intrapreneurship is entrepreneurship in the context of organizations. Being intrapreneurial is key for identifying opportunities, creating new value and realizing renewal – something organizations increasingly need in order to respond to complex, disruptive issues, such as sustainability and technological changes. Intrapreneurship is largely dependent on human efforts. Identifying new opportunities and realizing intrapreneurial goals are impossible without competent people. Attracting, managing and developing those capacities of employees is key. In this interdisciplinary course a multilevel perspective on the recruitment, management and development of human competencies is taken; competencies in general and intrapreneurial leadership and an intrapreneurial workforce in particular. All levels of organizations receive attention in this course: the individual employee, the entrepreneurial team as the pivot between the individual and organizational level, and the organizational level. More specifically, recruiting the right employees, competence development and management will be studied from the following three perspectives:
1.- the enactment and development of intrapreneurial competencies on the individual level;
2.- (intrapreneurial) learning, collaboration and interaction on the team level;
3.- embedding intrapreneurship and the development of an intrapreneurial culture in (R&D) departments for example in larger organizations and in SME's on the organizational level.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Understand theories, tools, concepts and models with regard to recognizing, managing and developing intrapreneurial (learning) processes and innovative solutions on the individual, team and organizational level
• Analyze the role of recognizing, managing and developing competencies (i.e. HRD and HRM) in fostering intrapreneurial behavior among individual employees, teams and organizations as a whole
• Develop, implement and evaluate an intervention for a real case of an organization in the context of intrapreneurship, in a process of collaboration with professionals from that specific organization
• Construct an advisory report for a real organization (e.g. in the agro-food/life sciences), specifically about social and human capital as input for improving the intrapreneurial capacity of the organization
• Formulate and reflect on personal learning goals for their personal and professional development during the course, in the context of the collaboration with an organization
• Reflect on the content of their advisory report in a discussion with peers, professionals and teachers