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noun (Business World) A business person who uses entrepreneurial skills from within a large corporation to revitalize and diversify its business, rather than setting up competing small businesses. Etymology: Punningly formed on entrepreneur by substituting the Latin prefix
intra- in the sense 'within, on the inside' for its first element entre- (or by clipping out the middle part of intra-corporate entrepreneurship: see
below ). The
result is a hybrid word made up of Latin and
French elements, which many people
would consider an ugly formation. History and Usage: The idea of intrapreneuring or intrapreneurship came from US management consultant Gifford Pinchot in the late seventies. At first he named the concept intra-corporate entrepreneurship, but by the mid eighties the shorter form was becoming established. The corresponding adjective is intrapreneurial; the view that employees of
large corporations should be encouraged to use their skills in this way has been called intrapreneurialism. All of these words are still predominantly used in American sources, although the concepts have been
tried in many developed countries. The belief that Japan is lacking entrepreneurs is wrong. 'If you
want to set up your own business or go into a partnership, your path is blocked. So an entrepreneur becomes an 'intrapreneur'...Intrapreneurs set up the new
business ventures. If a venture is a success, the company spins it off as a subsidiary. Business Review Weekly Oct. 1987, p.
158 A one day
briefing on intrapreneurship: developing entrepreneurs inside Australian organisations. Courier-Mail (Brisbane)
21 May 1988, p.
27 Not surprisingly, other parts of the IBM empire reacted jealously against the
PC team and the kind of threatening 'intrapreneurial' behaviour that they were encouraged to
adopt . Independent 21
Mar . 1989, p. 19
