Page - 234 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

and their teams, choose togooutof theirway tohelp the intrapreneurs.Theyspend theirpoliticalcapital tosupport the intrapreneurseventhoughit isnot their ‘dayjob’. As mentioned above, these altruistic managers are called ‘sponsors’. Sometimes, theyarecalledchampions,but that termisabitambiguousbecause it isoftenapplied not only to the sponsors,who champion the intrapreneurs, but also to the intrapre- neurs themselves,who champion their ideas. Thus, the term ‘sponsor’ is clearer. Sponsors spend timewith intrapreneurs and coach themonboth the commercial and the political issues and strategies. They stand up for the intrapreneurs when they are not present andhelp themaccess anynecessary resources. If an innovative solutionworks in a given company, it is almost always due to a close and trusting relationship between a self-motivated team of intrapreneurs and theirmanagement sponsors. That combination is what moves innovation forward through the inevi- table resistance of any corporate system. Organisations can facilitate sponsorship in several ways. First, companies can trainmanagers to be effective sponsors.This training includes both adescriptionof what a sponsor must look for in an intrapreneur and some dos and don’ts for managing them. Second, organisations can promote sponsorship by authorising lower-level managers to serve as effective mentors. Companies can provide managers with discretionary budgets to fund the early stages of innovation. These budgets do not have to be large to have a positive effect.Often a rapid prototype and a little travel money can be enough for testing an idea and gathering enough data to make a strong case for pursuing it further. Third, companies can hold managers accountable for sponsoring innovation. They can feature sponsoring intrapreneurs as a responsibility on the list of the Fig. 1 Digital intrapreneurshipmodel—the corporate solution to a rapid digitalisation Digital Intrapreneurship: The Corporate Solution… 241