2001: An Entrepreneurial Odyssey

Let's play devil's advocate for a moment: When the world ends, perhaps there will only be one company, its name being something along the lines of AT&T-Microsoft-Exxon. Maybe there won't be entrepreneurs. But at least we'll have intrapreneurs.

Intrapreneurs--a term at least as old as Gifford Pinchot's 1985 book Intrapreneuring: Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur (Harper & Row)--are men and women who run companies that are spin offs of parent enterprises. They don't own these companies, but as 38-year-old intrapreneur Jeff Dodge points out, "If I had started Channelware in my garage, I'd own 100 percent of it, and over a period of time, my percentage of it as an individual would get diluted down. In an intrapreneurial position, we actually come at it from zero and work our way up. At the end of the day, we end up at the same place."

Well, maybe. But at least Dodge didn't fork over any money to start Channelware Inc., an Ottawa-based software marketing and distribution subsidiary of communications giant Nortel. Dodge was one of thousands of employees at Nortel, which has branches in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. When he came up with the concept for Channelware, he was able to get millions of dollars in funding from Nortel's venturing program. He now runs the company while Nortel owns a majority interest.

"That's a tremendous advantage," says Jane Rafeedie, a 40-year-old intrapreneur in Atlanta. Her online company, KnowX.Com, provides public record information to small businesses and consumers.

"If I weren't doing this, I'd be starting something else on my own," insists Rafeedie, who had been working as a marketing manager when her former employer, Information America, suggested she run one of its subsidiaries, KnowX.Com, located in the same building.

Like all entrepreneurs, Rafeedie's company had better be up to speed--or else. If Information America decides KnowX.Com isn't performing adequately, it can eliminate the company on the spot. And that would mean Rafeedie would surrender something other than just the financial security of not having to be an entrepreneur--the use of her parent company's really cool rec room.

This article was originally published in the April 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: 2001: An Entrepreneurial Odyssey.