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Design Thinking Models and Processes

intrapreneur.tools — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:53:37 +0000

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that focuses on empathy, experimentation, and iteration. It has gained significant traction in the fields of corporate innovation and startups due to its user-centric focus, which leads to better product and service development.

Design thinking fosters a culture of experimentation, collaboration, and adaptability, which are essential for driving innovation in both startups and established companies. By placing the user at the center of the process, organizations can develop products and services that genuinely address user needs, thus increasing the likelihood of market success.

Variations of Design Thinking processes

Design Thinking Process Comparison (by Arizona State University)

There are several design thinking models developed by different organizations, each with its unique approach and emphasis. Here are the most popular ones:

Stanford d.school model: The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, also known as the d.school, has developed a widely recognized model of design thinking. It consists of five stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. This model emphasizes empathy, experimentation, and iteration as keys to successful innovation.
IDEO model: IDEO, a global design company, has its design thinking process that closely aligns with the Stanford d.school model. Their process includes three overlapping spaces: Inspiration (gathering insights and understanding the problem), Ideation (generating ideas and exploring possibilities), and Implementation (prototyping and testing the solutions).
IBM Enterprise Design Thinking model: IBM’s approach to design thinking emphasizes collaboration, rapid iteration, and alignment with business goals. Their model consists of three main principles: focusing on user outcomes, iterating and learning through continuous prototyping, and aligning the process with business priorities. The key activities in IBM’s design thinking process include hills (defining the goals), playback (sharing and getting feedback), and sponsorship (securing support from stakeholders).
Google’s Design Sprint model: Developed by Google Ventures, the Design Sprint model is a five-day process aimed at rapidly prototyping and testing ideas. The process includes five stages: Understand (mapping the problem and defining the challenge), Sketch (exploring solutions), Decide (choosing the best solution), Prototype (creating a testable prototype), and Validate (testing the prototype with users).
British Design Council’s Double Diamond model: This model focuses on dividing the design thinking process into four distinct phases: Discover (research and exploration), Define (identifying and framing the problem), Develop (creating and refining ideas), and Deliver (testing and implementing the solution). The Double Diamond model is so named due to its emphasis on divergent and convergent thinking during the design process.
LUMA System model: The LUMA System is a framework for practicing design thinking that includes 36 human-centered design methods organized into three key areas: Looking (gathering insights), Understanding (analyzing and synthesizing information), and Making (envisioning and creating solutions). The LUMA System encourages users to mix and match methods depending on the specific needs of their projects.

Each of these design thinking models has its unique approach, but they all share the common goal of fostering user-centered innovation, collaboration, and experimentation.

Problem first, solution second: The benefits of the Double Diamond

Double Diamond Design Thinking Process (Adopted from The Design Council)

While it might be subjective to claim that the Double Diamond model is the most advanced among design thinking models, it certainly offers some unique aspects and advantages that make it stand out. Developed by the British Design Council in 2005, the Double Diamond model addresses the design process through four distinct phases, which are visualized as two diamonds representing divergent and convergent thinking.

Here are some reasons why the Double Diamond model is considered advanced or particularly effective:

Clear distinction between problem and solution space: The Double Diamond model emphasizes the importance of first exploring and understanding the problem space (Discover and Define) before moving on to the solution space (Develop and Deliver). This separation encourages designers to spend sufficient time on understanding users and their needs before jumping into ideation and solution development.
Emphasis on divergent and convergent thinking: The model’s visual representation of two diamonds highlights the importance of alternating between divergent (expanding and exploring) and convergent (focusing and refining) thinking throughout the design process. This approach ensures a balance between creativity and practicality, leading to more robust and innovative solutions.
Flexibility and adaptability: The Double Diamond model is adaptable to various industries, project scopes, and contexts. Its four-phase structure can be easily customized to suit the needs of specific projects or organizations, making it a versatile design thinking framework.
Encouragement of iterative refinement: The Double Diamond model promotes the iterative refinement of ideas and solutions by cycling through the four phases multiple times. This approach allows for continuous improvement and helps to ensure that the final solution is both effective and user-centric.
Comprehensive approach: The Double Diamond model covers the entire design process, from research and problem definition to ideation, prototyping, and implementation. This comprehensive approach ensures that all aspects of the design process are considered and integrated, resulting in more holistic and effective solutions.

While the Double Diamond model offers these advantages, it is essential to remember that the success of any design thinking approach depends on the organization’s ability to adapt, customize, and apply the framework effectively. In some cases, other models like Stanford d.school’s, IDEO’s, or Google’s Design Sprint might be more suitable, depending on the organization’s culture, goals, and project requirements.

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Designing an innovation process from scratch – a blueprint.

intrapreneur.tools — Mon, 02 May 2022 07:53:00 +0000

Are you working in a corporate innovation unit? Are you planning to establish a corporate innovation unit in your company? If you want to drive innovation in your company and build your innovation process structurally from scratch, check out this basic blueprint of an innovation process that incorporates the knowledge from designing, executing and improving innovation processes and intrapreneurship programs in various company sizes and industries.

Each company is different, so are their requirements for their individual innovation processes. Take this approach as a guide. Start with your first draft, iterate and improve your process by incorporating feedback and testing new approaches for those parts of the process that need further tweaking.

Set you innovation goals

First, the reasons and objectives for setting up and running innovation activities should be clarified and defined.
We have already explained the sources of innovation, the objects that can be innovated, and the impact that innovations can have in the article “Types of Innovation”.
With reference to the 4 Types of Innovation explained there, all those involved should agree on the influence they want to exert on the market and whether they are prepared or have the possibility to use new technologies for this purpose which have not yet been used in their company:

Impact of Innovations: 4 Types of Innovation

Be aware of your capabilities

After the goals have been defined and supported by all those involved in the process, we critically examine what options are available to us with the current resources in order to successfully bring innovations or the first envisaged innovation projects into implementation:

Are we solving an existing customer pain point? Or are we following an idea that has no underlying challenge? Having first customers that already have this pain point that we are trying to solve, ensures that we will have first beta testers that provide valuable feedback.
Are we the right company to solve this challenge? Or are other companies on the verge to become relevant competitors quickly? What is our unfair competitive advantage that is hard (in terms of resources like time, staff and money) to copy?
Can we construct a business case out of the idea? Or is it impossible to define revenue structures and streams?

Be aware of your capabilities and find the sweet spot.

Set your innovation strategy

Based on your goals and your capabilities, there are different models to choose from, when building your innovation strategy:

Direction of innovation flow:

inside-in
inside-out
outside-in

Priorization of objectives:

primarily strategic
balanced
primarily financial

Compare Tobias Gutmann’s “Harmonizing corporate venture modes: an in tegrative review and research”.

Innovation formula (*simplified)

What factors make up the formula for successful innovation? Admittedly, this presentation can only be highly simplified, as it is different for every company and every industry. Nevertheless, based on our experience from a large number of innovation projects and in supporting the implementation of different intrapreneurship structures and teams, we can derive a basic formula that includes the fundamental factors, without which successfull innovation seems impossible:

Willingness: You cannot innovate with a team of employees that are unwilling to explore new territories, experiment, take risks, make mistakes and fail.
Capability: Knowing the right methods (e.g. agile methods rather than traditional waterfall methods), being familiar with the capabilities and basic characteristics of new technologies and
Permission: Get permission to work on innovation projects from at least one of the most relevant executives or top-level management. Ideally, you receive the buy-in from the manager responsible for the division you are innovating in.
Execution: This should be a no-brainer but sadly is not in all cases. Your innovation efforts are worthless on paper if you fail to execute them.

Mathematically all factors are weighted equally in this formula. In practice, they might vary in importance. For example: You can get permission later in the initial process when you have built a proof of concept (PoC) and want to build your MVP. With the PoC it is much easier to convince the management board than with a vague idea. Read more on the different product maturity stages in the Knowledge Hub.

Designing a continuous process

How does a successful process look like? First of all, a process should be flexible, adapt to change and be improved over time with each iteration. Therefore, the following draft of an initial process should be seen as your starting point for your very own innovation process.

Let’s assume that you want to build a process, where you can constantly teach employees the required methods, let them work on real-world challenges that are relevant to your company, and result in both a successful innovation and an alumni network of intrapreneurs within your company.

Here is the blueprint, let’s break it down:

Innovation process blueprint

1⃣ set the stage, draft an initial team, learn/teach methods

First of all, you will find many familiar icons from the previous formula: Start with or skip the first step by asking for permission. If you start small, this step can be omitted, if you are shooting for the stars right away (which is most likely not the best idea), you should better ask for permission before you start. This will ensure, that you are allowed to work on innovation projects during your main working hours, that you will receive funding more easily from the beginning and that you do not have to operate in stealth mode.

Draft your first team of like-minded innovation enthusiasts. Everyone in the team should be beneficial with his or her skillset, background, network and of course, they should all be motivated. Usually, the team should be drafted based on the skills needed for the specific challenge. In this case, when we are starting from scratch and still need to explore the process, it is beneficial to set up a motivated team first, in order to ensure that everyone is interested in exploring and establishing a suitable process and obviously keep everyone accountable. There you have it: your first batch in the innovation process.

Before you start, get a common understanding of agile methods. You are entering the land of unknown territory by working on innovations. There is no blueprint to copy from so you cannot apply traditional waterfall project management. You have to think in iterations. Ideally, you will have someone like an agile coach, an internal or an external facilitator skilled in those methods on board.

2⃣ define challenges, ideate solutions, iterate

This second phase revolves around applying typical agile methods like design thinking or design sprints. Choose a method of your liking or get inspired by literature revolving around testing business ideas or digital innovaiton. Enter this stage as soon as you have formed your pioneering team of intrapreneurs and have a couple of relevant challenges in your backlog. At this stage, some team members will ask themselves, how they can handle the daily business and the new innovation projects within the range of a typical 9-5 job. The answer is difficult and starts with “it depends…”. Usually, the best way to start new projects is by learning how to prioritize, saying no to irrelevant things and by admitting, that most people are not 100% productive throughout the whole day. Squeeze the most important to-dos from your daily business into the first half of your day, innovate the second half. Timeboxing is very important in this step in order to not get tangled in the temptation to overthink the innovation projects. (More on this topic in a separate post.)

Focus on defining your generic and specific challenge first. Work on real challenges that you have identified as a customer pain point before. Iterate through this process as many times as needed before you start with ideating the solutions.

After narrowing down the specific challenges, start with ideating solutions. Start with quantity, end with quality. Write down your most critical hypotheses that need to be answered by a proof of concept. Be honest with yourself: Do not ride on a dead horse or follow the sunk-cost fallacy. It is okay to fail. See it this way: The earlier you fail, the more time you have left to spend on relevant challenges and ideas.

3⃣ ship your prototype, receive funding, scale

When you have build a proof of concept or even a first prototype, set up a business case and derived a business plan and are clear about the initially needed resources, you are ready to enter this stage. Find out, who would fit your team to execute this project. This do not have to be the same team members with whom you have worked on surfacing this innovation project in the previous steps because most likely new/other skills are required for the execution. Sometimes you also need external partners to cooperate with during the execution phase.

Define the key performance indicators (KPI) that are able to capture the success of this project. At least one relevant financial factor will be beneficial but you can also come up with cost/time/resource saving KPI, efficiency KPI, sustainability KPI, etc. Take this homework and get the needed resources like financial funding, commitment to spend X hours of your time per week on this project.

Reach out and connect with relevant stakeholders, start building your venture and do not forget to both monitor the relevant KPI and also stick to agile methods by iterating to sprints in which you validate your ever-arousing hypothesis.

repeat, learn, grow

Congrats, you have successfully navigated your first batch to a simple yet proven process for building your innovation unit! Now it is time to adapt to your learnings and grow a base of innovative employees within your corporation.

Search for good mentors that can accompany all of the batches that run through this process. Those mentors can be internal stakeholders like top-level management but also the alumni of this process. Build an alumni network from all batches that participated in this process. keep them up to date, engage with them and invite them as experts to help rookies while working on their first projects.

Not all innovation projects end as a unicorn start-up! Be aware that teams will also “fail” – well, they will be the winners by finding this out themselves. Give everyone the chance to exit successfully: incorporate the findings in the daily business, simply terminate projects and start with something totally different or even let people take on new challenges outside of your company but stay in contact – you will never know when you can collaborate again in the future.

Conclusion: better done, than then perfect

Developing the perfect innovation process for a company takes time and cannot be achieved by a team of bright minds poring over a big blank sheet of paper. Rather, it takes a smart but above all risk-taking team to rise to the challenge and simply take the first step to venture the first iteration of their process and then adjust it after each iteration based on the insights gained.

It is better to start and then perfectional your process than to not start at all.

This post will be edited and extended from time to time. Make sure to bookmark it and come back, whenever you are improving your innovation process to benefit from the latest findings from the community.

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Why innovation contests are designed to fail.

intrapreneur.tools — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 04:13:00 +0000

The supposedly easiest way for corporates without innovation structures and processes to enter the topic of innovation and to make existing innovative projects visible seems to be the innovation contest.

What is an innovation contest?

Teams working on innovative projects come together to present their projects. An organizational team invites all colleagues, organizes a suitable location on the company premises with a small stage. Posters with project and team descriptions hang on bulletin boards around the room. Name badges are distributed at the entrance. Sometimes there is even a small camera team.

The teams pitch, colleagues take a seat in the audience who are interested in the topics or simply in novelty topics and want to broaden their horizons. Some are there just for the drinks and snacks – and because participation counts as working time. Fair enough. Colleagues from abroad join in for a pitch via video call. The transmission is smooth, the sound only breaks off once briefly. The organizing team nods appreciatively to each other: the worst fear of the event – a broken connection – has been overcome.

After the pitches, there is usually feedback from a jury. The jury is made up of senior executives and specialists. Sometimes, victory or defeat is decided by the applause-o-meter – an app that measures the volume of applause from the audience. The order of placement is announced, the teams come on stage once again, receive prizes.

Drinks, snacks, networking. The winners are congratulated, the runners-up are confirmed that their project is also very good. Participants disband at the end of the event, with some arranging to meet again in the near future. The next day, business as usual again. See you next year.

Have you ever participated in an innovation contest? Does that sound familiar?

The flawed design of innovation contests.

Perhaps the preceding description was a bit exaggerated. Nevertheless, such approaches to promoting innovation can be found again and again in medium-sized and large companies. There are certainly variations – both positive and negative. The following section explains why innovation contests in this form are not suitable for driving innovation forward in a company on a lasting and sustainable basis.

Once upon a time… (aka “once every other year”)

What sounds like the start of a bad fairy tale is unfortunately mostly the same. Successful innovation should be pursued permanently and steadily. Innovation contests usually take place once a year or every other year. A more frequent execution is usually not worthwhile because of the effort and because one fears not being able to present enough exciting projects.

Moreover, one runs the risk of comparing apples and oranges, as the teams are at significantly different stages of their implementation.

Conclusion: Corporate innovation is a process along the value chain and has structures – it’s not an event.

Ideas that don’t solve underlying challenges

The invitations of many innovation contests are addressed to teams that want to present their ideas. And this is what they do: present ideas, blue ocean, everything is possible. Good teams present not only their ideas, but also the challenges behind them, the target groups and the market they are addressing. The comprehensive package incl. problem-solution-market-fit. Some teams, on the other hand, lack methodological know-how. They do not solve any challenges with their ideas, they are unclear themselves who will later become users or even customers of their new business model. In short, they lack the challenge to solve with their supposed innovation. Sometimes a pitch template is provided in advance. Ideal! Now the fictitious problem is simply created quickly afterwards – without any basis or necessary validation.

Conclusion: Don’t pitch your idea, pitch the pain, the target group, your solution and the impact. Search for pitch deck templates for start-ups and use those as a reference.

Missing objective participation criteria

Objective approval and evaluation criteria could help here. However, these are rarely found in practice. The fear of excluding participants or even having too few participants because the entry barriers are set too high prevails.

Conclusion: Clear evaluation criteria derived from the company’s goals (vision, mission, strategy) not only help teams to work on meaningful projects, but also to provide fair and constructive feedback.

Highly political game

Due to the mostly missing objective evaluation criteria in combination with the non-transparent choice of the winning team (combination of jury, public vote, etc.), the victory can be easily manipulated. Jury members are usually fixed and communicated before the event. They can be given the right information in advance, directly or indirectly, so that they can boast an informed decision.

Bring your allies: How can the team that gets the most cheers end up losing? Impossible! The possibilities to manipulate are endless and of course, vary per contest.

Conclusion: Avoid manipulation opportunities by providing not only objective but also transparent criteria and decision processes.

Winner takes it all

This criticism is directed at the fundamental nature of a competition: winners and losers. By design, there are already losers in this construct. Yes, not every project presented is worthy of victory, but a loser usually only has obstacles placed in his path. Politically and in terms of external perception, a poor ranking means that, for example, other teams are reluctant to continue working on the project with a losing team. Team members themselves often lose interest in their project – in some cases unjustifiably, since continuing to pursue the project would still make sense for the company.

Conclusion: Make all participants winners. Those who already meet meaningful participation requirements also deserve to be promoted further.

Incoherent incentives

Now we have chosen winners, it comes to the awarding of prizes. It is not unusual for the team to receive non-cash prizes such as electronic gadgets, a bottle of wine or even tickets for leisure activities. However, these prizes are rarely directly related to the wishes and incentives of the team or their project. They are usually a token of appreciation that personally benefits the individuals involved. A recognition, nice gesture, no one goes home empty-handed.

Conclusion: Align team members’ incentives with their project and its progress. Teams typically crave support, sparring and mentoring from otherwise hard-to-address executives (e.g., larger time slots with top management), financial funding, time off for the project from their day-to-day work, or even attending an appropriate professional conference or booking outside experts.

Not everything is as bad as it seems.

Okay, to be honest, not every aspect of those innovation contests is bad. There are some positive features, that are worth mentioning:

teams receive valuable feedback from experienced colleagues.
Employees learn to present themselves and their projects, to be concise, to get to the heart of the matter.
healthy competition between teams is fundamentally good for spurring teams on and satisfying the greed for success.
Events ensure visibility: internally and also externally. This brings projects to the attention of executives, other teams that could provide support, and job candidates looking for an employer that promotes a culture of innovation.
and in the end: at least those companies tried to foster innovation. Bad execution is not always worse than no execution at all. Start small, iterate and develop your innovation process.

Speaking of innovation processes: Are you curious to find out how to set up your innovation process from scratch? Read our Knowledge Hub Resource on setting up an innovation process from scratch.

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Intrapreneur.Tools Social Channels

intrapreneur.tools — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 15:27:11 +0000

Follow Intrapreneur Tools on your most active channel!

Get your intrapreneurial spirit right in your favorite social media feed:

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Product Maturity Stages: Prototype, PoC, MVP, and more!

intrapreneur.tools — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 04:41:58 +0000

The development from idea to first shippable product is a tough and sometimes long journey. During that process, your idea typically evolves through the different product maturity stages that are described below.

These product maturity stages will help you to develop a product after finding out if there is any market demand at first before you start developing at all. After validating the desired market demand your idea becomes to live as an early prototype. You will prove that your concept works out the way it is planned before coming up with the minimum viable product. Find an audience you can bring true value to make it fall in love with your minimum lovable product. Add everything that is needed, cut everything that is too complex or too specific to be able to market your minimum marketable product to a broader audience, and follow the agile product development cycle in order to create a great product.

Pretotype

pretending to already have built a product
get feedback on idea
find target audience

Do you have a good solution to solve a current problem? Want to challenge your idea before getting too engaged with the topic? Start with a pretotype!

The term pretotype is comprised of the two words “to pretend” and “prototype”. As the term suggests, instead of having a functioning prototype, you pretend to be that far in your product maturity process. Instead, you try to validate your idea, collect feedback and adjust your idea. You can do that by either telling people in conversations about your pretotype, set up a sign-up page to validate the interest using sign-ups as a proxy variable to measure the interest, or pre-sell your product if you want to sort out the users that are so committed to your idea, that they will pay upfront to get your product launched.

In some cases, someone might point out to you, that your idea already exists. This might feel bad at the first glance but is a truly valuable hint. It prevents you from starting to work on a product, that already exists. Keep in mind that there is always room for competition. Do your homework to find out, if your solution is different from the one being offered and if so, do you have the chance to create a competitive advantage that is costly to imitate and thus sustainable.

In other cases, someone might ask you to explain the differences to a possible competitor. If you have done your homework well, this one should be easy for you. However, keep in mind that your thought difference might be different from the perceived difference of the person who asked you to explain the difference. Take this information to either adjust your description of your pretotype, incorporate the feedback into your idea or come up with new solutions to your problem that are better than the ones already existing.

Prototype

test different implementation strategies
very early stage beta version of product or service
test and learn fast and cheap

You’ve got your first iteration of product development-ready? A prototype is the first stage of a product to start testing. Your prototype is the first functioning version of your later product. It might have bugs here and there or needs adjustments but it is ready to be shown to first users in order to get an understanding of your solution and give feedback.

Depending on the feedback, you might want to build several iterations of prototypes before building a first shippable version of your product – this is totally fine, saves a lot of money and time, and ensures that you keep your focus on the customers’ needs and incorporate feedback in an agile development process.

Proof of Concept / PoC

Proof of Concept

validate underlying hypothesis
find out whether to pivot or persevere
test workflows, main technology and critical external factors

A proof of concept is supposed to show, that not only your solution works but that it will also have a market fit. Building a product comes with costs and usually the goal to make a profit by selling it (let’s keep it simple for now). You can have an outstanding prototype that everyone loves but nobody would pay a penny for. This is generally the case when your solution does not solve a problem that is worth solving (financially for the customers).

In order to test your concept, come up with a workflow that mimics the way you are going to solve the challenge(s) of your customers with your final product. This can either be a functional paper-based or 3D-printed model of a physical product, a click-dummy of an app, or your first lines of code executing the main process. Bring this prototype to work with your first prospective users. Let them use your prototype to prove your concept.

Don’t be afraid of fallbacks in this stage. Work in iterations by gathering feedback and implementing changes and adaptions to finally build a working proof of your concept before you move on.

MVP

Minimum Viable Product

create and provide value to first user base
get feedback from first users using your product or service

After you have successfully proven your concept, you will focus on building your first shippable increment: your minimum viable product. Think of it as an alpha test of your product. It will be far from perfect, it will most likely have a lot of bugs and it might look extremely basic but it will get the job done and thereby add value to its users. Make sure that your MVP adds more value than it confuses, frustrates, or bugs your users due to the state of imperfection.

The MVP allows for broader testing. Get more users to test your MVP, gather feedback, and don’t be afraid of users pointing out what does not work yet. This feedback is most valuable because it will help you define the direction in which you should steer your boat to reach the next product maturity stage. While adjusting to the needs of your first customers, you are able to test your product-market fit and see if you can create a product that is able to serve customers’ needs in your market.

MLP

Minimum Lovable Product

provide aknowlagable value to your best customers
find out how your product or service benefits your customers
create marketing strategy
turn users into advocates

You’ve launched your first MVP, filtered the valuable feedback for the aspects users like and the ones that need to be improved. Now it is time to decide which way to go to focus your product. You are most likely confronted with more bugs, ideas for improvement and feature requests that you can handle. Don’t worry! Critically analyze the feedback to find difficulties most users had and desires that come from your heavy users that see the most value in your product.

Those are the users that later turn into customers (if they aren’t paying customers already). Your minimum lovable product makes your solution so desirable for this target group, that they are convinced, they are hardly willing to live without it anymore.

MMP

Minimum Marketable Product

prepare product to launch to a broader audience
collect relevant KPI to set your development roadmap
spread thw word and market your product

Time to go big! The customer audience that you have been serving with your MLP provided you with valuable input on how they use your product or service and more importantly, they let you know how it benefits their everyday life or tasks and routines at work. This input is crucial to find out which value propositions you can pick on in your marketing strategy.

In addition, your customer base of your MLP also serves great as a source for testimonials. Let your customers speak about your product or service which not only gives your product a more tangible human touch but also legitimation due to the social proof.

Your Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) is a stable version of your product or service that withstands the mostly harsher critique of the broad market that you are going to release your product or service to in this phase.

Be prepared, that most likely you will not be able to please everyone, since you are now addressing a broader customer base with various backgrounds, needs, and abilities to judge your product. However keep in mind, that again you will receive great feedback to get inspired and evolve your product or service to a next and better version.

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Intrapreneur, Entrepreneur, Sidepreneur, Solopreneur, Wannapreneur

intrapreneur.tools — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 08:56:54 +0000

What is an intrapreneur and how does such differentiate from an entrepreneur?

There are numerous *preneurs out there. But what exactly are they, how do they differ and why does it make sense to have all those different meanings?

Let’s get started with the *preneur itself: All *preneurs have in common that they are business wo-/men focused around designing/building, launching, and running a venture or venture-like constitution.

Entrepreneur

The entrepreneur is the by far most popular manifestation. An Entrepreneur is someone who has started a new stand-alone business as his/her (mostly) full-time occupation. Therefore the entrepreneur is getting all-in, focussing on building his/her start-up.

Building a business from scratch comes with the downside of also having to deal with finding the right team, doing all the accounting/pay-roll work, which will detain the entrepreneur from focussing on the main challenges/idea/business.

Intrapreneur

An intrapreneur is employed at a corporation, working on a new – mostly innovative – topic within that corporation leveraging the amenities of drawing on corporate structures and functions. Hereby the intrapreneur can “outsource” activities like HR, accounting, marketing, etc. to the experts of the organization while focussing 100% of the start-up idea.

As an intrapreneur you might either work as an employee receiving your monthly paycheck without being invested into the newly build corporate start-up or you take over a role in that new company and thus gain stakes in the new subsidiary.

Sidepreneur

Not sure if your idea is working out? Afraid to take the risk and plunge in at the deep end? No worries: The sidepreneur is the perfect fit for you.

A sidepreneur is working a regular job as an employee but also hustling night-shifts or at the weekends to realize his/her dream of building their own start-up. This reduces the financial risk. However, you are not fully focused and might struggle to balance your corporate job and your start-up. You can also reduce your main job to e.g. 4 days a week and thus unlock a full workday for your sidehustle.

Solopreneur

While there are a lot of benefits when working in a team, some things might work out better on your own. The solopreneur is an entrepreneur who is working as a one-man-show. This form should not be confused with being self-employed because the focus of a solopreneur is building a business not billing his/her work by the hour.

Socialpreneur

While most versions of a *preneur focus on profitable businesses, the socialpreneur is working on a social, non-profit start-up contributing to society or a good cause.

Lifestylepreneur

Maintaining a certain lifestyle is the main goal of a lifestylepreneur. Technically this does not necessarily has to mean, that the lifestylepreneur wants to build a business. Digital nomads, remote workers and the like mostly work one job after the other being self-employed enjoying the freedom of roaming around the globe, and live a desired lifestyle without building a venture.

Wannapreneur

Fake it till you make it! The term wannapreneur (or also wantpreneur) is derived from “want to” and “entrepreneur”. The wannapreneur instead of getting things done just talks about the things he/she wants to do.

Some successful entrepreneurs started off as a wannapreneur. The upsides of talking a lot about your ideas before executing them are obvious: You will receive a lot of feedback about your idea, get to know similar businesses that already exist and start building your network. However, you need to deliver before the momentum decreases. Make sure to find the perfect timing for transferring from a wannapreneur to an intra-/entrepreneur!

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Intrapreneur-Tools

intrapreneur.tools — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 08:16:19 +0000

The all-in-one place for intrapreneurs!

Intrapreneur.Tools is your personal go-to source to super-charge your intrapreneurial spirit!

Build your ideas, evaluate them, and get prepared to launch them within your company as a true intrapreneur.

Skip all the hassle that comes with building a start-up by leveraging your companies existing structures and expertise within the specialized departments to focus on your core idea.

Intrapreneur.Tools provides the mindset and toolset an intrapreneur needs to ideate and create successful corporate innovations - also helping you to get through the rough parts on your jurney within the corporate environment - don't worry!

Techniques

600+

categorized by process stepsinstructions on creative techniques for your team's design thinking workshops or personal design sprint sessions. Categorized by the design thinking process stages and other well-known frameworks.

Tools

200+

well taggedcomprehensive searchable database with easy to deploy software tools to get your idea up and running in no-time. Flagged with pricing information, categorized by usage scenarios.

Knowledge Hub

extensive

updated frequentlyin-depth resource hub regarding all things innovation to get you a headstart on innovative resources, mindsets, and dinner-table access to expert knowledge in video and podcast interviews.

We are still adding some finishing touches, so stay tuned.

Get informed as soon as all Intrapreneur.Tools are available by signing-up today:

Build your ideas! Get notified:

What is an intrapreneur?

What is an intrapreneur and how does such differ from an entrepreneur, sidepreneur, solopreneur, wannapreneur, etc.?

What is an Intrapreneur?

How to design an innovation process from scratch – a blueprint.

Want to start innovating in your company but do not know where and how to start? No worries, we've got you covered with our proven blueprint of a simple innovation process to start your intrapreneurship journey.

Design a corporate innovation process!

intrapreneur.tools

🙋‍♂️ One shared platform for all your tas

💻 Build better business websites, faster. Witho

⛔ Don't start with an idea! ✅ Start with a cha

👥 Beautiful user logins, memberships & payments

📈 Zero to One by Peter Thiel 📃 Notes on star

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Agile Tools: the Digital TimeTimer

Looking for a digital version of the classic TimeTimer during remote-work sessions?

No worries, we got you covered with our digital version of the beloved TimeTimer.

digital TimeTimer

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