“Social intrapreneurship and innovative corporate culture are a great challenge for companies”.  So began “Intrapreneurship: a catalyst for social change”, a talk by Lucila García, deputy director of the SERES Foundation during the ESADE – SERES Foundation lecture series about how social intrapreneurship must go hand-in-hand with a company’s business model if it is to be successful. “Organisations must consider how they can find ways of enhancing people’s lives”, she explained.

Professor Ignasi Carreras, director of NGO management training programmes at the ESADE Social Innovation Institute, said that “the great challenge of intrapreneurship is to inculcate the culture of entrepreneurship in units and people that are not, generally speaking, entrepreneurs”. Carreras outlined the case of ESADE as an academic establishment that has always encouraged young people to take risks. “At the outset, it was companies that put forward all sorts of challenges for students to deal with but subsequently, we decided to focus on social challenges. We now know that students are highly motivated by this sort of project and that they can also help companies acquire outlooks that they would otherwise not have considered”.

“It is crucial for management to be involved in and aligned with the innovation and intrapreneurship strategy,” said Laura Aguado, people and organisation coordinator at Ecoembes and intrapreneur in her own company. “Innovation was made a cornerstone of our company in 2016 and gave rise to the Idea Project, a programme designed to pinpoint and fund environmental projects.” Aguado described the project as hugely positive, having already amassed more than 350 ideas, and explained that “it has been a success because the project spans different departments and because the management team, which is part of the evaluation panel, gets involved in them”. Aguado also emphasised Life-long recycling, a campaign created by Everis in conjunction with a network of town councils to help senior citizens recycle.

Innovative solutions for social issues

Karla Alarcón, director of the Everis Foundation created by two entrepreneurs, explained that Everis is not only willing but feels obliged to help their employees use technology to develop ideas that can help society. In this respect, she has launched the social intrapreneurship awards. “The creator of the winning idea will be rewarded with a trip to Japan to discover the culture of enterprise, and will receive guidance from an Everis group specialised in helping technology enterprise projects”. Of all the projects, Alarcón mentioned last year’s winner, “an app that provides an alternative, enhanced communication system for handicapped persons unable to speak.”

José María Bolufer, head of sustainable innovation at Telefónica, explained that his company has been working on marketing-oriented intrapreneurship for some time but has gradually shifted towards ideas that make an impact on society. “The basis of our Sustainable Innovation Initiative is that the projects put forward are related to employees’ everyday activities and are then developed inside the same area to avoid them being transferred from one department to another”. Bolufer also mentioned that the projects must be in keeping with SDGs, such as a fire-prevention drone project, a service to make Movistar+ more accessible to blind or deaf persons, and a venture to bring internet and electricity to jungle areas of Peru in conjunction with Acciona. All the speakers also agreed that intrapreneurship is a collaborative activity that extends outwards from within a company, therefore the choice of partners is of crucial importance.