Joris Van Heukelom used to be the vice president Content Development at MTV networks (Viacom). The last 2 years he focused on start ups and analyzed their methodology to innovate and implementing these tactics within corporates. Joris Van Heukelom will be a speaker at the Intrapreneurship 2012 Conference in Paris (December 13th). 

The amount of powerpoint-slides is not a KPI. 

This statement makes corporate people laugh very loud. And it is effective, because humour works quite good to self-reflect and learn about misbehavior and even to start embracing new behavioral patterns. Because in essence this is exactly what it is about.

How to learn a different way to behave ?

How can knowledge workers teach themselves to behave in a totally different way?

If you would profile the founder growing his startup and the knowledge worker busy at a corporate, you would find remarkably lots of differences between them.

Let’s pinpoint some :

A startup has no fear of “cannibalisation”

First, the paradigm of cannibalisation does not exist in the start up scene.

Can you imagine how liberating this is? In boardrooms and other corporate spheres possible cannibalisation is the most heard argument hurdling the track towards the really interesting stuff. The stuff that moves the needle and grasps the technological foundation needed to disrupt current business models.

Hereby the risk-avoidance behaviour of the founder vs the corporate guy is 180 degrees different and if even existent in the founders head, based on totally other arguments.

The entrepreneur lies awake concerned about the next pivot in development while the corporate worker has got a sleepless night wondering what the next step in his career will look like. Another big difference is the skillset owned by both types of knowledge workers.

You could easily describe it as the DIY (Do it Yourself) – versus the LMA-mentality (Lets Manage it Away). Not trying to be exhaustive in the differences, the biggest question mark points to a hypothetical symbiosis of both worlds.

Is it possible for a corporate to behave like a start up or even better, is it possible for a corporate worker to behave like a founder?

This immediately taps into the structure and governance of current big companies.

The conviction there is, that if the corporate will is existent, the personal behaviour can be trained and learned, leading to innovation through a format which is ten times cheaper and ten times faster than every earlier corporate path.

The main raison and rationale behind this ambition is simple and easy to understand. If you are convinced that everyone, even managers, can make and create things, you are more than half way through.

Creating the best makers then becomes a key factor. And this tangible path is practical and understandable for everyone, which unleashes a creative boost that leads to real products and services, no powerpoints.

That’s the essence of Intrapreneurship.

Joris Van Heukelom