Intrapreneurship training and programs

The Framework for Intrapreneurial Capacity

For ambitious professionals ready to make a bigger contribution, and organizations ready to develop more people leaders trust to move ideas forward.

Inside every organization are ambitious people with ideas that could improve performance, strengthen culture and create new value. Great ideas often die, and not because they are bad. They die because they are not aligned with leadership priorities, not grounded in the current system, or not presented in a way that makes it easy for those in power to say YES.

Join the Cohort Bring It to Your Organization

Not ready for either? Start free with the live workshop, How to Get Your Ideas Heard at Work. Sixty minutes, no cost, nothing to prepare.

The Intrapreneurship Journey framework: Gain Perspective at the center, practiced through Observe, Ask, Listen and Clarify, surrounded by the five Dimensions of Align, Analyze, Build, Enroll and Implement

Gaining Perspective at the center, surrounded by the five Dimensions

Leadership before the title has a name: Intrapreneurship

An intrapreneur is someone who sees what could be better inside an organization and takes ownership of helping make it real.

For individuals, intrapreneurship builds influence, business judgment, credibility, and readiness for greater leadership. For organizations, it unlocks the bottom up intelligence and initiative of people closest to the work, strengthening innovation, collaboration, ownership, and performance.

In a fast-changing world, this is the capacity individuals and organizations need to thrive, not only to keep up with change, but to lead it forward.

Change is threatening.Even when the idea is good.

Every organization is shaped by its history, sustained by its processes, measured by its metrics, and reinforced through its reward systems. That creates momentum, and momentum resists being interrupted.

So when someone not yet in power brings a new idea forward, the reaction is often hesitation. Not because leaders do not care. Because leaders see risks others may not see.

What will this disrupt?
Who will this impact?
What will it cost?
Can this person be trusted to understand the full picture?

The Journey helps ambitious professionals answer those questions before they walk into the room.

History shapes an organization through three overlapping forces: People, Process, and Metrics and Reinforcement

History, people, process and metrics create organizational momentum

You cannot influencewhat you do not understand.

The Intrapreneurship Journey begins in Gaining Perspective, and stays anchored there. In its simplest form that means getting someone else's world: what leaders care about, what they are measured by, what pressures they carry, what risks they see, and what success requires from their point of view.

Four actions make it practical.

Observe what leaders focus on, measure and reward, both the obvious and the less obvious.
Ask thoughtful questions that deepen your understanding of processes and people.
Listen brilliantly, to learn and absorb, not simply to answer.
Clarify that what you heard is what they meant.

From there the Journey moves through five Dimensions. Align connects the idea to the priorities, performance metrics and reinforcement systems that matter most. Analyze works with others to find the real performance gaps and root causes rather than the surface symptoms. Build turns those into credible recommendations weighed against return, cost, risk and timing. Enroll moves away from the language of the pitch entirely, because what leaders need is clarity and believability rather than persuasion. Implement carries it through shared ownership until the new way becomes the standard way.

They are called Dimensions rather than steps for a reason. There is a start and a finish, but there is continued referencing and confirming as you go, so it is better not to describe the Journey as linear.

See how the full framework works

Gaining Perspective at the center, surrounded by the five Dimensions

From having ideas to becoming someone leaders trust to move them forward

The Journey does more than help people present ideas. It changes how they think, listen, collaborate and lead.

People learn to respect what already exists before proposing what could be better, to build ideas through the perspective of others, to reduce perceived risk, and to bring forward recommendations leaders can trust. Individuals become more credible. Teams become more collaborative. Organizations become more adaptive. Better ideas get sponsored.

The goal is not framework recall. It is better leadership behavior in the presence of a real opportunity, which is why the Journey helps people think like leaders without asking them to stop thinking for themselves.

Individuals become more credible.

Teams become more collaborative.

Organizations become more adaptive.

Better ideas get sponsored.

For professionalsInfluence those in power before you are in power.

You may not have the title, the authority or the purse strings to just do it yet. You can still learn how to influence. This is not about pushing harder, it is about seeing more clearly. It is not about selling your idea, it is about building enough clarity and believability for others to say YES.

Over five weeks in Intrapreneurship Foundations you learn to:

Understand leadership priorities, pressures, metrics and risks
Observe systems and ask stronger questions before proposing solutions
Practice Brilliant Listening and build trust across levels and functions
Use data, stratification and root-cause thinking to improve your judgment
Co-create options and evaluate return, risk, adoption and the cost of doing nothing
Frame ideas for different listeners without losing your authenticity
Design pilots that create evidence, learning and shared ownership
Become someone leaders trust with more important ideas and decisions

Join the Cohort

Commitment

Five weeks, one two-hour orientation plus eight two-hour sessions, 18 live hours

Group

Small, so most of the practice happens with other people

You work on

A realistic business simulation first, then a real situation from your own job

Between sessions

Practical work inside your normal job rather than on paper

Best for

Emerging leaders and high-potential talent

For organizationsDevelop professionals who can think, and act, like leaders.

Every organization needs people bold enough to generate new ideas. What leaders actually need is people who understand priorities, performance metrics, risk, trade-offs and collaboration, and who know what it takes to move a new idea from recommendation to implementation. Not people who only point out problems.

Run inside your organization, the Journey is built to:

Bring more of the intelligence and initiative already inside your workforce forward
Create a common language for moving ideas from insight to execution
Strengthen emerging-leader capability through real business practice
Improve cross-functional collaboration around the performance gaps that matter
Reduce poorly aligned or incomplete proposals that consume leadership time
Build greater ownership for implementation and organizational change
Use AI and innovation more responsibly by including the people and systems affected
Develop a culture where associates contribute to performance, not only tasks

Bring It to Your Organization

Three formats, one methodology

Intrapreneurship Foundations

Five weeks, one orientation and eight two-hour sessions, run inside your organization with co-workers. For emerging leaders and high-potential talent

Foundations Intensive

Two days. For leadership retreats, off-sites and team development

Accelerator

Two to three months. For strategic initiatives, innovation projects and transformation work

Programs are adapted to your organization's priorities, language, cases and existing methods without losing the Journey's core disciplines.

Built from both sides of the table

The real question a leader asks is rarely "is this interesting?" It is "do I trust enough to change?"

Do I trust the analysis? Do I trust the process? Do I trust the people involved? Do I trust that the return is greater than the risk? The Journey was designed by people who have sat on both sides of that question, and it is built to answer all four before the decision is made.

Brent Martini

Former Fortune 50 executive and advisor

Decades of leadership across corporate, entrepreneurial and nonprofit settings, beginning at Bergen Brunswig and spanning FinTech and real estate start-ups, consulting and automotive enterprises. He has both sponsored change and lived with the consequences of it, which is where the decision-maker half of this method comes from. His purpose in building the Journey is to condense more than forty years of hard-earned insight into something people can use sooner.

Mentor Dida

Educator, facilitator and learning designer

Founder of Changemaker Allies, designing transformative learning journeys for intrapreneurs, emerging leaders and organizations. His work has included partnerships with Ashoka, Facebook, T-Mobile, Boehringer Ingelheim and Arizona State University. He has served as Global Futurist in Residence at ASU's College of Global Futures and hosts the Facilitating Change podcast. He brings the learning-design half: how people practice difficult ideas and carry new behavior into real work.

Leaders need ambitious people who care enough to bring new thinking, and who understand what it takes to sponsor that thinking responsibly.Brent Martini

Two perspectives. One vision. Experience and energy. Wisdom and creativity. Together they help organizations develop emerging leaders who think like intrapreneurs, make meaningful contributions, and move their organizations forward.