INTRAPRENEURSHIP SUCCESS: The WL Gore success story overview

INTRAPRENEURSHIP SUCCESS: The WL Gore success story overview

The Intrapreneur must learn to get around the roadblocks of corporate structure and a stodgy manager, or the traditional corporate bureaucracy. A successful corporate entrepreneur or Intrapreneur must first convince middle management to allow them to share with senior management their idea or concept. After dealing with middle management, then the hopeful Intrapreneur (corporate entreprepreneur) must convince senior management their new and unique, "out of the box" product, service, or idea has real merit, a viable market, and would be both profitable and synergistic to the corporate mission.

Intrapreneurship has successfully been utilized by corporations, partnerships and non-profit firms in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa.

An intrapreneur, or corporate entrepreneur, who is really being an entrepreneur who has less risk in a new venture. He also has much less control of when, or even whether, the product will be launched. Being an intrapreneur takes a unique set of skills beyond creativity, including being willing to take some risks at sharing and pushing an unique idea, having the perseverance to wait for senior management's approval to create and launch the product or service, and the drive to see it through to fruition, no matter what.

The terms and basic concepts of intrapreneur or intrapreneurship have existed and been effective utilized in corporations for decades before the TIME Magazine article in February 1985, "Here come the Intrapreneurs." Steve Jobs, Apple's Chairman then and now, used the word "intrapreneurship" in a September 1985 article in Newsweek about Apple's use of intrapreneurship to effectively have the Apple "MAC™" team, "go back to the garage."

In 1985, three years after Dr. Haller groundbreaking academic study was published, the major new media such as TIME and Newsweek published articles, and a book was published on Intrapreneurship by management consultant Gilford Pinchot III.

Back in 1982, Dr. Haller wrote, successfully defended his Master's Thesis and was published in June 1982 as the first academic case study on intrapreneurship, specifically on the topic of the Intrapreneurship Success of PR1ME Computer Inc.

This is the summary of the intrapreneurial success story of the W.L. Gore (maker of Gore-Tex™)-ELIXER™ Guitar Sting line.

A an example of intrapreneurial success was found in W.L. Gore Associates, Inc. (makers of Gore-Tex rain gear), which did not take as long as the 12 years it took 3M to go from idea to product, as it took 3M to create, embrace, market position, manufacture, and distribute it's "Post-It" line of products. W.L. Gore has a successful Intrapreneurship program to encourage its employees to develop new ideas for the firm. W.L. Gore calls its inspiring intrapreneuring program, "Dabble Time Policy." This W.L. Gore intrapreneur fostering program allows employees to devote 10% of their time at work to their creative intrapreneurial projects.

In the middle 1990's, Dave Myers and John Spencer jointly created, positioned and launched an entirely new product line using the materials, technology, and who how that they W.L. Gore Associates, Inc. used in the manufacture of their main line of unique products, including their line of Gore-Tex rain gear and other products made with their proprietary Gore-Tex material.

The result was the successful creation of an entire new product line and what became the ELIXER Guitar string line. Myers' was the product creator and Spencer was the marketing genius. Together they helped W.L. Gore launch the new brand of ELIXIR Strings, which has become one of the top selling brands in the guitar string market all over the world!

This just one of dozens of Intrapreneurship Success stories which will be presented in articles on SelfGrowth.com by the Intrapreneurship Institute.
Dr. Howard Haller's new book tells the full story of the successful application of intrapreneurship detailing how a small OTC listed company grew to be the #1 performing stock on the NYSE in just five years is presented in "Intrapreneurship Success: A PR1ME Example" published by VDM Verlag Dr Müller AG & CoKG.