Intrapreneurship: Strategies to promote internal innovation

Innovation in large businesses is rarely straightforward, easily becoming a maze of competing priorities, limited budgets and deeply rooted processes. Employees often find themselves fighting for resources while navigating goals that weren’t built for experimentation.

The most effective intrapreneurs understand this reality. They win by identifying real organizational pain points and delivering solutions that make the business stronger from the inside out.

“I’m always looking for small things [in my organization] that I was like, ‘Maybe we could make that better,’” Abby Hess, a nurse practitioner and clinical innovation lead at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said during an intrapreneurship discussion.

Hess recognized an opportunity to strengthen understanding of how pediatric anxiety during anesthesia was evaluated. She developed the Child Induction Behavioral Assessment (CIBA), a standardized tool that brings clarity and consistency to the measurement of outcomes. The tool is currently being used in hospitals worldwide.

Hess identified a daily challenge and solved it. She focused on an unmet need rather than trying to improve an already functioning process.

“Start small,” Hess advises. “Noticing those problems, coming up with ideas to solve them and then working with your leadership to say how you might do something different.”

Nate Sowder, ecosystem innovation manager at 1819 partner company Fifth Third Bank, said, “[Intrapreneurship] is a trust exercise … it’s about building a proof culture, building trust and then showing I learned something from it so I can keep doing those things.”

“No one’s telling me to do these things when it comes down to intrapreneurship,” Sowder said. “It’s about me proving I should be allowed to work on it.”

Work visibility is essential to earning credibility and support. While self-promotion may feel uncomfortable, staying quiet about your impact can prevent momentum and limit opportunities to advance.

“Showing the work that I’m doing – showing that it’s valuable – is something I’ve never been great at,” Sowder said. “But I have to do that to show it’s worth doing all the time.”

Responsibility for transparency does not rest solely on your manager. “A lot of [making my work visible],” Sowder said, “falls on me.”

Intrapreneurs within the Cincinnati Innovation District have access to resources that many startup founders can only dream of such as funding streams, built-in infrastructure and a direct line to UC talent and STEM students. They also often have cross-functional teams to collaborate and network with to support and accelerate their ideas and scale impact more quickly.

Hess encourages leveraging workplace resources for ideas that address real problems. When a company resists change, entrepreneurship through outside groups like the UC Venture Lab may be a better path.

“Sometimes entrepreneurship is the right route for a certain idea,” Hess said. “And sometimes you can do it better if you’re building in collaboration with your organization.”

The most powerful ideas often start with simple projects. By making steady, iterative progress, intrapreneurs can test concepts, demonstrate impact and earn support one win at a time.

“Our ideas need to get smaller,” Sowder said. “Then you can easily test it, value if it’s true and then, in theory, it becomes a lot harder to say ‘no’ to.”

Modest projects demand fewer resources and are simple to implement. Achieving success with these manageable initiatives can open the door for larger intrapreneurial opportunities down the road.

“If we build something super small,” Sowder said, “it becomes a lot harder to say ‘no.’”