Examining Intrapreneurship: The New Way to Crowdfund

Crowdfunding is a term we all already know. It’s been well identified with innovation and entrepreneurship. But, there aren’t people thinking of the potential it could have in other fields. One example of this is intrapreneurship.

Organizations need innovation to survive. They want to empower their own employees with it. There are many specialized applications focused on fostering innovation and managing ideas. But, they aren’t crowdfunding platforms. These existing crowdfunding platforms aren’t for companies. So, “crowdfunding for companies” is a term that could be really interesting to move “behind the firewall”.

“This Kickstarter model should be a part of the innovation infrastructure of every global enterprise that takes intrapreneurial creativity and coherent corporate culture seriously. Why not make the organization a marketplace that creates the option to tap into not only ‘the wisdom of crowds’ but the ‘excitement of employees’ or the ‘perceptions of personnel’?” says Michael Schrage, from the Harvard Business Review.

Empowering employees to innovate through crowdfunding means:

–       Better proposals: There will be an investment (of time or money) so the project involved needs to be a good one.

–       Deeper engagement: The more they feel their actions are meaningful, the more engaged they will be.

–       More considered participation: As they see that their contributions are important in solving the company’s challenges.

As we said before, there are currently two kind of platforms in the market. Those focusing on ideation management, and those focussing on crowdfunding collaboration.

It doesn’t make sense to copy the Kickstarter model for your organization. You need a system to manage the projects till implementation and evaluate user activity. To make a perfect platform, you must integrate both features.

Nextinit uses the crowdfunding methodology in the form of gamified investments. It helps companies filter their best ideas to solve business challenges.As a result, it helps the management process from concept to implementation.

But we are now moving a step forward in the process. This is down to the release of our brand new feature: “Make it happen”.

Make it happen allows users to contribute their time or budget to make an idea a success. (Remember the importance of giving unstructured time to employees? The 20% time Google rule?).

We’re committed to empowering employees to make more competitive companies. We also believe that applying crowdfunding principles could be the best thing to do.

We’re convinced that we can make it happen. We can go one step forward and make ideas, with the collaboration of everyone, and make it into a reality.

Empower your people by encouraging them to put forward their best ideas. Read our blog post on how to encourage your people to bring their best ideas forward.