This article was first published on LinkedIn.
In 2018, Jeff Zias and I published “The Intrapreneur’s Journey – Empowering Employees to Drive Growth”. The inspiration for writing the book came from our years of leading innovation at Intuit and learning from innovation leaders at other companies. We were passionate about sharing these important insights:
Large companies don’t have to be stodgy and mired in bureaucracy. In fact, a large company can develop a culture of innovation that continually drives growth.
A culture of innovation involves empowering frontline employees to innovate by giving them time to work on their own ideas.
Empowered employees are engaged employees and will often attest to high job satisfaction and doing “the best work of their lives”.
For too many people, work is just a means of making a living. It is a necessary drudgery. But in companies with a culture of innovation, employees are passionate about their work and eagerly look forward to tackling the challenges of the day.
With our book, we didn’t just want to make the case for developing a culture of innovation. We also wanted to provide a how-to manual by providing hands-on practical tools for implementing systemic change. The Intrapreneur’s Journey is not a straightforward and easy one. There will be stumbling blocks along the way. Our book anticipates these issues so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel!
During a visit to South Africa, I had the honor of sharing our insights with students at the Wits University Business School, where I was hosted by professors Mjumo Mzyece and Diran Soumonni. The message was well received and I found these lessons resonated quite strongly in the African context. However, I was dismayed to discover that for most people, getting a copy of our book was an almost insurmountable challenge (it turns out Amazon doesn’t have quite the global reach!).
To solve the distribution problem, Diran and Mjumo suggested we collaborate on a revised edition of the book for a local publisher. With the new edition, we would make the book even more resonant for African readers by including African innovation case studies. We would also adapt the contents and structure so the book could also be used in an academic environment (and not just targeted at business people).
I’m happy to share that Wits University Press will be publishing our new revised edition in 2023. In my view, Mjumo and Diran’s contributions have significantly improved the book by strengthening the arguments for developing a culture of innovation.
I’m excited to share the Intrapreneur’s Journey with a more global audience. Stay tuned as we publish more updates ahead of our 2023 launch!
In our book The Intrapreneur's Journey, Mjumo Mzyece, Diran Soumonni, Jeff Zias and I have written about how companies can drive growth by empowering employees to work on their own ideas. Our soon-to-be-released second edition includes new African innovation case studies.