Earlier this week, Georgetown University announced the launch of its brand new Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation.

This 10-million dollar center funded by Georgetown alumni, Alberto and Olga María Beeck, aims to inspire and prepare students, faculty, and global leaders with the necessary skills to generate and innovate solution-based world change. The Beeck Center actively promotes a policy-relevant, cross-disciplinary approach to research, ideas, and action. The Center’s approach hopes to challenge common assumptions and lead to ideas and actions that are creative, adaptive, and morally grounded. Planned initiatives include: workshops, speaker event series, social innovation fund, fellows program, social impact lab, and research and policy initiatives.

At the center’s opening event on February 11, the Beeck Center welcomed leading experts in the Social Innovation space such as Pam Omidyar (Co-Founder, Omidyar Network and Founder, HopeLab), Jean Case (Co-Founder and CEO, Case Foundation), and other leading experts on design and storytelling for advocacy. The reception’s closing remarks were by the Center’s Executive Director, Sonal Shah, whose brings leadership from her wealth of experiences at the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, Google.org, Goldman Sachs, the Center for Global Development, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and other organizations.

We had the chance to talk to some of the students already involved with the Beeck Center from across Georgetown University who shared their work in social innovation across the world, from the GU Impacts Fellowship program to the SIPS Fund.

A Georgetown student shares her stories from her GU Impacts program field experience in South Africa.

Georgetown sophomore, Naman Trivedi, discusses projects that have been funded through the student-run Social Innovation Public Service (SIPS) Fund; the Fund has given out grants ranging from $300 to $13,000 for projects here in DC and as far away as Nepal.

 

If you missed the Beeck Center’s launch event, you can check out the recorded webcast here.

Social innovation can come from anywhere, whether it is from individuals dedicated to public service, social entrepreneurs, or social intrapreneurs working at companies, multilateral organizations, non-profits, or government agencies. We can’t wait the see the impact on the world coming from institutions such as the Beeck Center and are very excited for this welcome addition to the social innovation community.

According to Mark Hanis, Director of the Beeck Center,

“We’re delighted to be working with TechChange, who is a prime example of the type of B Corps social enterprises that we want to foster at the Beeck Center. Like TechChange, Georgetown has always leveraged technology for social change, and Georgetown students are eager to pursue careers that involve a double bottom line business model like TechChange’s. Part of Beeck’s unconventional approach will be grounded in social intrapreneurship as an important component of the social change ecosystem because we often work with larger entities like government, NGOs, and multinational corporations. Ultimately, intrapreneurship is about teaching people how to be more effective in inspiring positive change.”

To help welcome members of Beeck Center community, we’re offering a $100 discount to Beeck affiliated organizations and individuals to join our upcoming Social Intrapreneurship course, which begins in on February 24! Use coupon code: DriveImpact before February 21 to get $100 off the course!

We’re excited to have one of our top viewed TechChange animated videos featured in The Guardian! Check out our “Why Is It So Hard to Try Something New in ICT4D?” video created by TechChange animator, Pablo Leon, and narrated by Laura Walker Hudson of FrontlineSMS.

TechChange animation video in The Guardian

To view the video in The Guardian’s Impact and Effectiveness Hub, click here.

 

Technology alone won’t change an organization, but people might.

Last week Forbes featured our upcoming course on Social Intrapreneurship in a post on 2014’s Most Valuable Employee: The Social Intrapreneur. While we’ve posted in the past on how businesses are already being redefined to enact change (TechChange is a registered B-Corp), it is increasingly it is individual intrapreneurs that are innovating within organizations to implement start-up practices and catalyze innovation. The timing is fortunate, as the old model of how to fit employees into an established organizational model is undergoing a fundamental redesign.

A recent Economist special report on tech startups stated: “[T]he world of startups today offers a preview of how large swathes of the economy will be organised tomorrow.” Organizations that thrive will not be the ones with passive employees, but rather those with team members able to adapt organizational processes around the possibilities of ever-improving technology. However, as we’ve covered in our World Bank animation (Why Is It So Hard to Try Something New in ICT4D?), these increasingly rapid technological disruptions of “sexy gadgets” still require individuals to manage organizational change.

Fortunately, you won’t have to figure it out alone. Since our last update, we have two additional speakers that can share their experiences. Ken Banks (@kiwanja), founder of FrontlineSMS and author of a new book on The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator, or even FCC CIO David Bray (@fcc_cio), a prodigy of government IT who started his first federal gig at 15.

Class starts Feb. 24. We hope you’ll join us. Apply now!

Social Intrapreneurship SocInt online course Ashoka Changemakers TechChangeWe’re excited to partner with Ashoka Changemakers to launch an online course on Social Intrapreneurship this February 25 – March 21, 2014! This four-week online certificate course on “Entrepreneurial Strategies for Social Innovation Within Institutions” aims to empower employees at private, public, and nonprofit institutions across the world with the tools and mindset of a lean startup entrepreneur looking to change the world by implementing socially innovative ideas within their organizations. For employers of these institutions, it discusses ways to foster a culture of innovation and staff engagement that drives social change.

What do you need to become an intrapreneur? How can employees of organizations promote social good?
TC108 will give participants experience with pitching, planning, advancing, and executing innovative and socially conscious programs within large organizations. Activities are geared to assist and inform organizations and individuals that want to cultivate and promote innovative, lean start-up, entrepreneurial approaches within their workforce to promote social good and provide an opportunity to engage with like-minded professionals. The course creates a global network of individuals who can expect an interactive learning experience to share ideas and strategies.

Social Intrapreneurship bootcamp: Changemaker competition and takeaways
Course participants will go through a customized Ashoka Changemakers concept formation and evaluation process and engage with accomplished guest experts who are leading social intrapreneurs at their companies, providing an insider’s view of what makes a good social intrapreneurial project proposal and what it takes for these ideas to stand out. By the end of the course, participants will have a two-page concept note, one page budget and powerpoint pitch for an innovative social change idea to be targeted to a specific organization. The TechChange/Ashoka Changemaker committee will review each concept note and once considered viable under the course principles, the approval will result in a TechChange Intrapreneurship Certification.

Join our learning community of Intrapreneurs
We couldn’t be more excited to be working with Ashoka, who has supported social intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship through programs such as the Ashoka Changemakers, the League of Intrapreneurs, and more for over three decades.

We’re also excited that Joe Agoada will be back to facilitate this course in February. He’s honing his intrapreneurial chops as a featured speaker at the 2013 Intrapreneurship Conference in Barcelona this week. Follow his live tweets from the conference @joeagoada and also from Jennifer Estevez @socialqgroup to follow the latest on Intrapreneurship.

Check out the syllabus and register now for the course to lock in early bird rates. Contact nancy [at] techchange [dot] org if your organization is interested in booking a group discount rate. Any questions on the course itself? Please email Jennifer [at] techchange [dot] org.

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About Ashoka Changemakers:
Changemakers convenes and connects high-potential changemakers, their ideas and resources, through the power of collaborative competitions and partner networks.
Changemakers builds on Ashoka’s three-decade history to engage a global network that embodies the Ashoka vision where “Everyone is a Changemaker”. In order to realize this vision, the world needs people to gain the skills and resources to collaborate on solving complex social problems. Visit changemakers.com to learn more.

About the Facilitator
Joseph Agoada is the Resource Mobilization Coordinator for the UNICEF New York headquarters’ Social and Civic Media Section, and founder of the mobile mapping project, UNICEF-GIS. He also implemented UNICEF’s 2010 World Cup in My Village initiative in Rwanda and Zambia. Joe is a recipient of several awards for his activism including: 2008 International Youth Foundation a Global YouthActionNet Fellow, 2009 Starbucks Shared Planet Grant Honoree, and 2012 Google Personal Democracy Forum Fellow. Joe has spearheaded the Intrapreneurship courses at TechChange, and is a featured speaker at the 2013 Intrapreneurship Conference in Barcelona. He graduated the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Get over 50% off tuition for Introduction to Intrapreneurship online course

Could the U.S. government shutdown be an opportunity for innovation? Being outside the confines of the office presents an opportunity for employees of any agency to develop the ideas and skills needed to advance innovation. In other words, here’s a chance for furloughed U.S. federal workers to focus on government innovation, and TechChange wants to help: starting today, TechChange is offering furloughed U.S. federal employees to take our Introduction to Intrapreneurship course for only $50.

More than ever, U.S. federal employees must find ways to maximize impact on a budget in one of the largest bureaucracies in the world. But where does innovation in a big bureaucracy come from? Ideas can come from every level of an organization, and are sometimes initiated by middle management or those in junior level-roles in a hierarchy. There’s a saying that, “Scarcity fuels innovation.” Outside the normal confines of the office, in a fresh setting, creates a breeding ground for new and innovative ideas. Thus the furlough is a great opportunity for government workers to discover and plan for new value-creating ideas.

Fortunately, government innovation has precedence. Todd Park, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States of America, is a great example of a government innovator. At the age of 24, he co-founded AthenaHealth, a company providing digital healthcare business services including electronic medical record services and virtual medical billing that went public on NASDAQ in 2007. In 2009, he accepted a job in the White House as the Chief Technology Officer of Health and Human Services (HHS) where he championed open innovation for government initiatives. He launched a series of hackathons and “datapaloozas” to make government data more available to public. In 2012, Park was promoted to CTO of the United States and special advisor to the president on technology. He has since launched the Presidential Innovation Fellows program.

TechChange wants to make it easier to empower U.S. federal employees to become intrapreneurs, applying entrepreneurial and start-up practices like Todd Park, to create innovation within their respective government agencies. Our Introduction to Intrapreneurship course, which was recently mentioned in Fast Company, is an opportunity for furloughed workers and other institutional innovators to learn from each other and be empowered to inspire change at their respective organizations, whether it be a federal government agency, an NGO, or a corporation.

What is Intrapreneurship?

A Beginner’s Introduction to Institutional Innovation

Written by Joe Agoada and Jennifer Estevez, Co-facilitators of TC108a: Intro to Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurship defined

In·tra·pre·neur·ship (n) 1) Successful adaptation of entrepreneurial attitudes and strategies inside of a bureaucratic organization. 2) Implementation of start-up practices within a large organization, producing valued innovation.

Where does the term intrapreneurship come from?

The word “intrapreneurship” sounds like a new term, but it in fact has some history to it. The term was first discussed in a 1978 piece by Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot titled “Intra-Corporate Entrepreneurship (Some Thoughts Stirred Up by Attending Robert Schwartz’s School for Entrepreneurs)”. Norman Macrae’s 1982 Economist article, “We’re all Intrapreneurial Now” further explores intrapreneurship and gives naming credit to the Pinchots. However, the word seems to have gone into relative hibernation until the dot.com bubble burst and Silicon Valley innovators started to look beyond the newest internet start-up for growth in the technology sector.

Intrapreneurship vs. entrepreneurship, per Guy Kawasaki

For a modern understanding of intrapreneurship, we can look at one of its most vocal proponents: author, motivational speaker, and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki was an early employee at Apple and a “chief evangelist” at the company for years.  With his 2004 book, Art of the Start, he began making direct references to intrapreneurs and has recently become a more vocal advocate. For example, he wrote this  July 2013 blog post on LinkedIn on “The Art of Intrapreneurship”. Here’s an excerpt:

  • “There are lots of guys and gals inside established companies who are as innovative and revolutionary as their bootstrapping, soy-sauce-and-rice-subsisting, external entrepreneur counterparts. This is for these brave souls who face a different kind of reality and must practice the art of entrepreneurship inside a company—or “intrapreneurship.'”
  • “From the outside looking in, entrepreneurs think intrapreneurs have it made: ample capital, infrastructure (desks, chairs, Internet access, assistants, lines of credit, etc), salespeople, support people, and an umbrella brand. Guess again. Intrapreneurs don’t have it better; they simply have it different. Indeed, the reality is that they probably have it worse because they are fighting against ingrained, inbred, and inept management.” – Guy Kawasaki

Bottom line: intrapreneurship is difficult, challenging, and nuanced.

Defining intrapreneurship: the starting point to inspiring institutional innovation

 Understanding exactly what intrapreneurship is can be a starting point in igniting growth and innovation within institutions. Harnessing the intrapreneurial approach can empower workers of any generation to advance their careers while improving their organizations. Intrapreneurship is especially helpful for junior-level employees and mid-level managers wanting to overcome the obstacles associated with getting consensus and support for innovative new ideas in the workplace. Getting employees to understand the concept of intrapreneurship is the first step to empowering a new cadre of innovators within institutions; nurturing intrapreneurship just may be the key to powering the global economy forward.


Learn more about intrapreneurship.

Join us with Ashoka Changemakers and other past, current, and aspiring intrapreneurs across the world that are sharing and learning the tools and techniques to innovate within their organizations for social change in TC108: Social Intrapreneurship – Innovation Within Institutions. The course begins February 24 – March 21, 2014. Enroll now to lock in your early bird discount and group rate!

 

About Joe Agoada

Joseph Agoada is the Resource Mobilization Coordinator for the UNICEF New York HQ Social and Civic Media Section in the Division of Communication. He has held this post since August of 2011 when he also founded and launched UNICEF-GIS. Prior he implemented UNICEF’s World Cup in My Village in Rwanda and Zambia. Between 2008 and 2009 he worked directly for Amy Smith, founder of the MIT D-Lab as a course administrator and then conference organization for the 2009 International Development Design Summit. In 2008 he was named an International Youth Foundation a Global YouthActionNet Fellow and in 2012, and a Google Personal Democracy Forum Fellow. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and currently resides in Washington, D.C.

As you can probably tell, we’re all very excited here at TechChange. Former TechChanger, long-time Ushahidi guru, and eternal Zen Archer Rob Baker has been selected as part of the second round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program. Yes, Rob will be contributing to Open Data Initiatives at USAID  where he will develop innovative solutions in areas of national significance.

For those who are unfamiliar with the program, the White House website has details:

“The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during focused 6-13 month “tours of duty” to develop solutions that can save lives, save taxpayer money, and fuel job creation. Each team of innovators is supported by a broader community of interested citizens throughout the country.”

But don’t just take it from the White House. Have a listen to last year’s fellows about what their experience meant:

While we’re pretty stoked about open data in general (and even teach it as part of our course on Open Government) and this development in particular, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for our first-ever upcoming course on intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship is defined as entrepreneurial behavior from within a large, established institution. But the truly interesting part of this program is that it shows an angle that institutions should consider: institutionalizing a process for insourcing innovative talent and new ideas. While most of our posts have thus far focused on the role of individuals in pushing their organizations forward, the truth is that forward-thinking organizations are looking just as hard for entrepreneurs to help rethink their business. After all, if ideas like this can deliver solid results for an institution as large as the federal government, then your organization is hard-pressed to find an excuse.

And so from the bottom of our hearts and the top our nerd attic, we’re sending our best to Rob and all of the incoming fellows! We know you’ll crush it.

Rob Baker Speaking at DUPictured: Rob Baker speaking at DU

 

If you’re interested in contributing to PIF projects, you can learn about current and future rounds of the PIF program at whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows, contribute code on GitHub, or visit Data.gov to help turn openly available government data into new products, services, and jobs. 

Want to change the world with socially minded and innovative ideas, but bills, student loans and lack of investment opportunities are pushing you away from entrepreneurship and towards jobs that are unfulfilling and not utilizing your education? According to Accenture, you are not alone.

A staggering 41% of college graduates within the past two years are underemployed, which means they are either in jobs that are not full-time or have nothing to do with their degree. The 2008 global financial recession changed the employment landscape, drying up credit for start-ups and diminishing confidence in large institutions. The tepid recovery makes them cautious in hiring. Yet there is a growing demand from within the large organizations for employees who help them remain competitive through new ideas and a start-up mentality. The need has increased the demand for intrapreneurs, innovators from within the company that will move it forward.

Nick Hughes is an example of a social intrapreneur in action. Hughes was a middle marketing manager for Safaricom, the largest mobile network in the East African nation of Kenya when he developed an idea that would help millions of disadvantaged people while driving the bottom line of his company. Hughes’ concept, which became M-PESA (m for mobile, “pesa” is Swahili for money) has become a wildly lucrative, socially beneficial, and intrapreneurial idea which has led Safaricom to become the banker for the poor and rural in Kenya who can not get accounts from traditional banks. As of 2013 the M-PESA service has 17 million members, providing a critical socio-economic service for Kenya’s poor and profits to Safaricom.

The idea of social intrepreneurship is becoming particularly enticing to young people who want stable careers, but care less and less about making a fortune in corporate America and more about making a difference in the world around them. Personally, intrapreneurship has been an incredibly rewarding career choice. In 2009 I lost my job, and spent a year trying to become a social entrepreneur, sleeping on couches, living unemployment check to unemployment check, and trying to launch a company that would deliver social purpose. In 2010, UNICEF picked up on one of the company’s ideas and offered me a short-term consulting opportunity to carry-out an innovative idea. Thus began my path to learning the process of becoming a strong source of new ideas and innovation for the established institution. Three years later I’ve been a part of an amazing international team, got the opportunity to travel to Rwanda, Zambia, and Brazil, and had a consistent paycheck.

Innovating from within UNICEF provided stability and opportunities that I would not have had otherwise. In 2011, from within UNICEF, I led the launch of unicef-gis, a mobile and web application for youth-led digital mapping of risks, resiliency, and vulnerability. The app was deployed successfully into countries (Brazil and Haiti) where I knew nobody and did not speak the language. Without the UNICEF network, the idea would have never come to fruition or realized the amazing social impacts.

I personally understand today’s harsh jobs reality for graduates, interns, and young professionals. The truth is that a six-figure education and degree is only enough to level the playing field, but not enough to secure you a rewarding job that allows you to be independent and pay back student loans. That’s why learning how to practice intrapreneurship in your field can become a novel employment option for those who will be entering the workplace or are already in it, looking to move up into more senior positions. These large institutions like the World Bank, United Nations, and Google are actively looking to hire these intrapreneurial individuals.

People often ask me, how do you become gainfully employed doing cool, innovative projects for a large international organization? The truth is, intrapreneurship is not something learned in the traditional classroom or from a textbook. It’s understood by trial and error, failing forward, and failing fast. These are skill sets that can be practiced and learned, and lead to rewarding and stable jobs. Interested in learning about intrapreneurship or know a student, intern or young professional that might benefit from learning about it? TechChange.org is providing a limited number of individuals the opportunity to learn about intrapreneurship from guest experts and interactive, self-paced online learning modules. Learn more:

TC108: Social Intrapreneurship – Innovation Within Institutions

Is it possible to be an entrepreneur AND work for a large organization? Intrapreneurship, defined as entrepreneurial behavior within an established bureaucratic organization, is offering new graduates, young professionals and those working in the international development field a new way to drive innovation and increase social returns on investment in their work. The importance of the “start-up” mentality for aide since the recent global financial uncertainty has ignited a rapid growth in social entrepreneurship. Now large institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank and academia are hiring former entrepreneurs or those suited to become intrapreneurs.

I became an intrapreneur in early 2010. After taking a public bus ride from Kampala Uganda to Cape Town, South Africa I attempted to launch a network that would screen live World Cup games on inflatable screens and deliver educational content before, between and after matches. The process of starting up the program and getting the brand visible was incredibly difficult. Even when someone liked the concept, they questioned if we had the capacity to carry out the logistics and security of bringing hundreds of people together in rural villages without electricity.

Fatefully, I connected with a team within UNICEF New York Headquarters called the Youth Section. The Youth Section (now the Social and Civic Media Section) was filled with creative and innovative risk takers who were pushing the envelope in social media and digital engagement within the organization. The Youth Section picked up the World Cup idea and with their support and vision a version of the concept called World Cup in My Village was able to reach thousands of young people in Rwanda and Zambia

Without the UNICEF network of offices providing financial resources, security, and technical support, the project would have never been realized. Since the completion of the project, I’ve been working with the UNICEF Social and Civic Media section team to form innovative technical partnerships and helped start-up a growing youth led digital mapping initiative.

Intrapreneurship is a perfect option for international development professionals  and those aspiring to work in the field who feel the need to unleash their creative talents and satisfy their urge to create something new, but without risking everything as an entrepreneur. Intrapreneurship is also becoming more and more valuable for companies who are looking for people that take initiative to drive innovation and add to the company’s competitive edge. Accordingly, intrapreneurs are now some of the most valuable and sought after employees to an international development organization.

New and emerging technology is giving millennials, social entrepreneurs and bureaucrats the opportunity to become invaluable intrapreneurs and generate new and sustaining value for their companies. The intrapreneurs borrow from the principles of entrepreneurship and adapt these principles to fit within their organization. A limited group will have the opportunity to be a part of the first ever Tech Change Summer Mini Course which will teach the essentials for intrapreneurship and discuss about the latest strategies for becoming and working with intrapreneurs . Guest speakers will range from academic experts to practicing intrapreneurs from UNICEF and the World Bank.

To learn more about the power of intrapreneurship and to unlock your intrapreneurial potential, apply now to our Social Intrapreneurship: Innovation Within Institutions online course with Ashoka Changemakers. The course runs February 24 – March 21, 2014.