I recently read Yue Huang’s blog about intrapreneurship in Google. She mentioned that Google support employees intrapreneurship because this kind of innovation can enhance the company’s creativity. I agree with her perspective but I believe there exists other significant reasons.

James Whittaker used to be an employee in Google. His reason for leaving Google is that “The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.”, said by James on his blog. In fact, except James, there are also other employees who left Google such as Lars Rasmussen and Omar Hamoui. Many employees in Google claimed that Google’s “20% time” which allows employees to work on side projects, actually no longer exists.

In my view, Google allowed intrapreneurship in order to prevent brain drain and recover enterprise vitality. But the question is does it really work? The “Wave” create by independent team in Google was an example of failure. Although intrapreneurship is a great approach to promote the development of a company, I consider that how to support and lead employees intrapreneurship in very crucial. Some employees might afraid of risks of intrapreneurship, some might lose confidence during intrapreneurship. Therefore, I think the boss should help employees establish positive attitudes before intrapreneurship. Besides, Google should not too much exert stress on employees.

Blog link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/yuehuang/2014/10/25/intrapreneurship-in-google/