Will Social Intrepreneurs save the world?

A guest blog from Rob Kyle, current Imperial MSc student

Social entrepreneurship in an organisation has been aptly reclassified as ‘social intrapreneurship’ (SI). These intrapreneurs are described as people within a company that direct an initiative for innovations which address social or environmental challenges profitably.

Clearly intrapreneurship is an evolution from entrepreneurship and holds many of the same characteristics. However there are obvious boundaries and advantages to intrapreneurship; internal politics and lack of support or greater resources and more partnerships, to name but a few.

There are a growing number of social intrapreneurs in organisations around the world, all going against the grain in business to create social as well as economic value. Examples such as Ray Anderson in Interface or Jo Da Silva at Arup have shown that creating social as well as economic value can be achieved. To read in greater depth case studies of successful SI…