Foster entrepreneurial behaviours among employees in corporations is already a challenge, now will Public organisations see an opportunity in encouraging such intrapreneurial skills?

According to Richard Boly, head of eDiplomacy at the US state department, the answer is definitely YES.

Richard Boly is a high ranking official based in Washington and an entrepreneurship specialist. One of this missions within the American administration is to encourage civil servants in the foreign affairs department to propose and engage in innovative initiatives in a risk averse environment that is obsessed by stability and the status quo.

Administration 2.0 and Intrapreneurship

Richard Boly will speak about his innovative management style at the Intrapreneurship 2012 conference in Paris on December 13th.

After the events of the World trade centre on September 11, the American federal administration realized the flaws in its heavy bureaucracy and its rigid internal management systems.  The Wikileaks affair, a few years later was an additional wakeup call for the Foreign affairs administration.

During the last decade, the US State Department has reconsidered some of its management practices. Richard Boly, among others, has suggested to implement a more open and agile internal structure, that is essential to adapt to an even more complex global reality.

The first step for a migration towards a 2.0 organizational model, had to be the implementation of internal collaborative tools: Internal social networks, blogs, wiki etc.

Liberate the individual potential in a trustworthy environment

It is not sufficient to develop peer to peer open communication channels to transform a public organizational structure, let alone an organization in the size of the US state department. For the migration to work, individuals need a greater level of autonomy on the one hand.

On the other hand, they need to evolve in a framework that inspires confidence to adopt entrepreneurial behaviors. They must in particular be reassured that the outcome generated by their initiative will not be overlooked, regardless of the form that the reward would take ( (recognition, merit, financial… eventually)

Lastly, necessary managerial and logistical support need to be made available to help initiative takers become intrapreneurs and to drive forward the ideas considered relevant for the organization.

A special investment fond to support intrapreneurial initiatives

having implemented the organizational migration mentioned above, what else needs to be done to stimulate this new behavior in order to foster innovation through intratrepreneurs?

Multiple experiments have been tried and a series of projects are now being implemented by the U.S. administration of Foreign Affairs.

The most notable project is undoubtably, the creation of an intrapreunarial investment fund by the US State Department in collaboration with Venture capitalists. This fund is dedicated to finance the projects initiated by civil servants working in the American embassies around the world.

Richard Boly will talk about this investment fund, among other things at the  Intrapreneurship 2012 Conference organized by Global Enterprise, in partnership with  Novancia Business School. The one day event will take place on December 13th in Paris.

For more information about the conference program and to benefit from the last tickets available visit the event website :www.intrapreneurshipconference.com