Intrapreneurship Programme Evaluation

It’s been a rollercoaster year with over 28 intrapreneurs supported, 11 ideas securing £60,000 of funding and we’ve helped people and organisations transform their approach to innovation and intrapreneurship.

You can read the Executive Summary or the full Evaluation Report but we’ve summarised the key findings for you below.

The results

“The people who made it to the final are not all people you would have expected, people have talked about it in really positive terms since. People can see that it was the first time and that it can be built on. It has been positive and more positive than I expected.” Enabler/ Senior Team Member

The Lens increased resilience, developed confidence, widened networks and built the skills of participating intrapreneurs. It enabled them to develop and test their ideas and to have them heard through training them to communicate to their full potential at an exciting final. 

“Innovation was always expected of us as managers. We were always expected to look for talent that’s tricky when you got a day job is about regulation.  We set up ways to share ideas at a regular forum and online.  I would say we have got a very innovative workforce but we often didn’t have the time because you’re often responding to changes outside.” Manager

Managers were given the task of judging the final and allocating investment to the successful pitches. This made them feel valued, allowed them to identify key front line staff and enable workforce innovation.

The ideas put forward tended to have a strong fit with organisational objectives, and were judged by senior team members to have strong potential to make a difference.  There were also a few ideas that challenged “the way things are done around here”. The Lens added value by enabling significant development of two thirds of the ideas.

Quality 

“It has been a great experience, something I wouldn’t normally get working in this sector.” Finalist

The Lens was universally judged to offer high quality training and be well thought out.  Most senior managers saw significant value in partnering with the Lens in terms of the quality and affect the programme and also the “kudos” of being involved.

Learning

The evaluation has provided us with a good body of evidence to say that our approach to encouraging innovative through intrapreneurship works. We will continue to refine our approach to ensure intrapreneurship becomes a recognised path for organisations to generate new and exciting ideas. The report has identified three areas in which we can do so: To open it to staff in the wider organisation or even to partner with other organisations on particular topics.

• Doing more at the start to stimulate ideas.
• Including people that the organisations work for as judges and potentially in intrapreneurial teams.

The Lens would like to thank Jenni Inglis from VIE for her excellent work.