Entrepreneurial activity takes many shapes and forms whilst having their own distinctiveness in approach and execution. These days you see people risk-taking within, across and beyond organisational boundaries and its relevant to not only briefly allude to the subset but also put forward the notion of the contrapreneur. Before we do so, however, lets revisit the umbrella term and its denominations.
The intra-preneur for example was a term coined by Gifford Pinchot more than 2 decades ago alluding to risk-takers inside organisations who create sub–businesses from the core of the organisation. This individual is subject to the boundaries and nuances of internal politics and often have to create factions to win support internally whilst entertaining the strategic corporate agenda with their own innovative spiel. Simply, they are creating a NewCo within CoreCo with the key focus being on task force like teamwork. If you have basically ‘sucked up’ to your superiors and have leverage through charisma and know how to hold your composure, you will be successful this domain.
Next comes the interpreneur who is interested in creating new ventures across organisations by utilising complementary resources and supported by a clear mission purpose, priority matrix, boundaries and ground rules that all members must follow. Metrics such as ROI are determined by the parents and they often operate in beta stealth mode as such pursuits are aimed at dominating markets, de-stabilising competition or creating disruptive innovations.
With the extrapreneur, you put forward an open agenda either across organisations or systems and where boundaries are wide and vatuage but glued together with a mission to create value from separate but common competencies. Open innovation models prevail here and intellectual property sharing is the core tenet. You are essentially risking capital both financial and intellectual. Fundamentally, this is exploration outside of the core activity and boundaries of the organization. Virtual teams dominate this setting
Since we have delineated a few common sets of entrepreneurial activity and attributed them accordingly; now come to my favourite and one that is hugely important when riding the force of transparency.
The contrapreneur is one that constantly challenges their own foundation (in corporate, organisational and community settings). This is the home for the true radical thinker and organisational mutant. You are essentially a corporate heretic pooling together resources and ideologies to independently disrupt and perturb established paradigms in the corporate agenda. The environment that must exist here is one of absolute teamwork, trust, and communication; things only visionary leadership can promote. This is not a place for fair-weather ideologues. You are embracing special abilities here and architect a compelling vision that is aimed at disrupting assumptions, questioning the void and doing something that is altruistic yet required to establish law and order. It is their duty to enforce some degree of legal retribution, metaphorical violence and astutely see through corporate facades and powerplay. They may employ some degree of trickery to nudge any system towards intended outcomes. The contrapreneur is one that maintains the balance of power and employs every toolset available in business, law, morals and at times spirituality to induce cataclysmic change internally and externally to the enterprise. Evidently, these are special people for a special ‘space’ and special time. Its therefore important to note that if a contrapreneurial process becomes integral within an organisation, the members will eventually become fixtures and their effectiveness wanes. If their time as members ends, they will probably never be able to re-integrate into the regular system.
Regardless of that, remember at the end they have revolutionised ways of thinkings and instigated a catalyst for transformational change. They are akin to prophets and mystics and ultimately rise when there is injustice being served amidst microcosms of enterprise, culture and communities. In aggregate, they are what spiritualists would say as people of god.