Juggling three oranges: a shoutout to intrapreneurs

Shoutout to everyone who’s taken on the adventure of intrapreneurship.

The word is younger than it sounds. Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot coined it in a 1978 white paper, “Intra-Corporate Entrepreneurship”, and later wrote a book whose subtitle made the case: Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur. The Economist’s Norman Macrae credited the term to Gifford Pinchot in 1982. In 1985 Steve Jobs told Newsweek that the Macintosh team had been exactly that, “a group of people going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company.”

It often feels harder than entrepreneurship — like juggling three oranges instead of two.

It often feels harder than entrepreneurship — like juggling three oranges instead of two.

A classic case is Lockheed’s Skunk Works. It began in 1943, when Kelly Johnson and a hand-picked team started the XP-80, the first US jet fighter, before the formal contract arrived. They worked out of a rented circus tent, apart from the rest of the company, and delivered in 143 days. Lockheed credits Johnson with challenging “the bureaucratic system that stifled innovation”.

Different paths, same restless need to bring ideas to life.