Over the last year, I have led a team to create a new service offering within a consulting firm focused on helping our clients design, implement, and manage a green revolving fund. Here are few anecdotes, insights, and lessons learned during those adventures. Presented to NYU social entrepreneurship students on September 18, 2012.
Beginners Guide to TikTok for Search - Rachel Pearson - We are Tilt __ Bright...
Four Pillars of Intrapreneurship
1. The Four Pillars of Intrapreneuship
Insights from our adventures in cleantech finance innovation
Love Unify Drive Execute
Joe Indvik
Climate and Energy Consultant
ICF International
2. The Four Disclaimers of This Presentation
• ICF is large (but not too large)
• We are just getting established
• I am walking selection bias
• I’m 25 (and thus may have no idea
what I’m talking about)
3. How can you drive
innovation within an
established organization?
4. Love Unify Drive Execute
You must love your idea with enough passion to
pitch it to 10 people consecutively with equal
excitement each time
(because you will)
5. Love Unify Drive Execute
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself
what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because
what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
- Howard Thurman
6. Love Unify Drive Execute
Our idea: Build a service
offering around this
A GRF turns energy efficiency from an expense into an
investment with measureable returns.
7. Love Unify Drive Execute
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Combine the things your
organization already does into something new.
8. Love Unify Drive Execute
Sustainability Quantitative
Strategy Analysis
Green Revolving
Fund
Implementation
Offering
Energy Renewable
Management Energy
9. Love Unify Drive Execute
Be strategic in how you drive your idea
through the ranks. Going straight to the top
with a new idea is not always best.
10. Love Unify Drive Execute
How we refined and pitched our idea:
Division Leader
• Marketing strategy Offering
• Long-term upside
Expert Drinks With
Guidance The Enemy
Line of Business Leader
Business
• Business case Model
• Revenue potential and cost
Direct Manager
• Basic concept Idea
Soft Pitch • SWOT analysis Informal
Laugh Test chats
11. Love Unify Drive Execute
Excellence is the best marketing around. That
goes for internal pitches as well as external sales.
Do whatever it takes to knock it out of the park.
12. Love Unify Drive Execute
Our Path to Profitability
Client Value
ICF’s Value
Industry
Presence
Late Nights
Project 1 Project 2 Project 3
(Complete) (In Progress) (Planned)
13. Love Unify Drive Execute
My Rule of Innovation:
Saving the world should be the first thing you think
about and the last thing you talk about.
The best ideas are driven by a noble goal, then
justified with a strong business case that has nothing
to do with that goal.
IntroClimate and energy consultant at ICF InternationalManagement and Policy consulting firm based in DCSurveyOver the past year, I have been an intrapreneur. I led the creation of a new service offering at ICF based on my experience in college.Four pillars of intrapreneurship
As an intrapreneur or entrepreneur, you must love what you do.Creating something new is challenging, so you need to make sure you have that spark to keep you going.QuoteI’ve met many folks who are trying to create something new, and you can always tell which ones have come alive.So the most important thing you can do as an intrapreneur is to think long and hard about what you love and then figure out how to build something around it (not the other way around).
As an intrapreneur or entrepreneur, you must love what you do.Creating something new is challenging, so you need to make sure you have that spark to keep you going.QuoteI’ve met many folks who are trying to create something new, and you can always tell which ones have come alive.So the most important thing you can do as an intrapreneur is to think long and hard about what you love and then figure out how to build something around it (not the other way around).
As an intrapreneur or entrepreneur, you must love what you do.Creating something new is challenging, so you need to make sure you have that spark to keep you going.QuoteI’ve met many folks who are trying to create something new, and you can always tell which ones have come alive.So the most important thing you can do as an intrapreneur is to think long and hard about what you love and then figure out how to build something around it (not the other way around).
The thing that makes me come alive is climate change.Was initially a skeptic, but was eventually convinced in college that it is not only real, but one of the defining social problems of our generation (97% of climatologists didn’t hurt either)The key to solving the climate crisis is rolling out clean energy and energy efficiency, and the key to doing that is financing—cold hard cash$500B to $1.5T opportunityThe problem is that EE is perceived as an expense rather than an investmentEE is things like…Usually the expense is incurred and the resulting savings are simply absorbed into the operating budget and ignoredTherefore fails to attract the level of investment that it couldWe faced this problem at DartmouthClassGraveyard of failed student sustainability proposals > most had failed because they bit off more than they could chewWe knew that there were ample opportunities for EE investmentWe wanted to build a compelling, tightly reasoned case for making that investmentSo we proposed a new strategy called a Green Revolving FundRelatively new when we did it, but nearly 100 schools have now done thisGot it funded and about to start financing projectsIntrapreneur at Dartmouth before I was at ICF
Single biggest advantage to being an intrapreneur (rather than an entrepreneur) is that you can leverage the resources of your organizationWe identified four things that ICF was already doing that could be combined to produce this new offering80% of the resulting service offering was just repackaging existing services (with the 20% being the “glue” we provided as the subject matter experts)
Single biggest advantage to being an intrapreneur (rather than an entrepreneur) is that you can leverage the resources of your organizationWe identified four things that ICF was already doing that could be combined to produce this new offering80% of the resulting service offering was just repackaging existing services (with the 20% being the “glue” we provided as the subject matter experts)
The next key step (and the part where failure is the most common) is to drive the idea up the ranks within your organizationTake it from an idea to an actual product, service, etc.Takeaway 1: Be willing to rethinkTakeaway 2: Being strategic about how you pitch internally
The next key step (and the part where failure is the most common) is to drive the idea up the ranks within your organizationTake it from an idea to an actual product, service, etc.Takeaway 1: Be willing to rethinkTakeaway 2: Being strategic about how you pitch internally