The Twelve Steps of the Intrapreneur Addict

As I was finishing writing my book on intrapreneurship (titled “The Twelve Labors of the Intrapreneur – Overcoming the Obstacles from Within,” and coming out this fall), I had the idea of creating the twelve steps of the intrapreneur, inspired from the famous 12 steps of AA. After all, intrapreneurship is an addiction like any other.

We admitted that we are change agents – that our passion for change and building could not be contained.
Came to believe that the power of intrapreneurship could help our company achieve new heights on its path to growth.
Made the decision to work with our innovators and commit to turning their innovations into a profitable intraprise.
Made a searching and objective inventory of our company’s assets and how they could be leveraged to accelerate our new intraprise’s progress.
Admitted to our Sponsor, ourselves, and to our corporate colleagues the exact nature of our new corporate start-up’s objective and the role they can play in ensuring it succeeds.
Were entirely ready to listen to our customers, Sponsor and Allies if they thought we were not properly positioning our innovation in our new market.
Humbly ask our corporate parent company to remove any roadblocks to the successful launch of our corporate start-up.
Made a list of all the skills and expertize we needed to succeed, and were given authority to hire the right people or transfer them from the corporate parent organization to our new business.
Made direct decisions to invent new business processes, and maybe break a few rules, to ensure that our new corporate venture was set on the right foundation to succeed.
Continued to take personal and team inventory to ensure we had the right skills and expertize to sustain the successful growth of our new business.
Sought, through objective and validated customer feedback and market data, to continuously iterate and improve our business model assumptions and validate that we were on the path to sustainable growth and pivot our strategy as necessary.
Having had the support of our parent company and Sponsor, and having been given the freedom to create new business practices that meet the needs of a corporate start-up, we led our intraprise to success.