NEW STUDY | Newly minted intrapreneurs ready for employment

Confident problem-solving team players. That’s how intrapreneurial students can be succinctly described after graduation – and companies are happy to hire them.

Many graduates of entrepreneurship programs choose to work for established companies rather than start their own business. Employees with entrepreneurial skills, such as problem-solving and business acumen, are known as intrapreneurs. This is a type of employee that is valued in established companies.

– Innovation is increasingly important in competitive markets. And we can see that our students with entrepreneurial skills are in demand, says Joakim Winborg, researcher at the Sten K Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship, at Lund University.

Together with his colleague Gustav Hägg, he has studied how entrepreneurship education can be designed to fit the needs of established companies. They have examined the skills that entrepreneurship students, specializing in intrapreneurship at the master’s program at the Sten K Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship, develop thanks to the business development project included in the education. Students can either work on internally focused projects, which are about developing the conditions for intrapreneurship within the company. Or with externally oriented projects, which are about identifying and developing new business for the company.

The researchers have identified five abilities that have been strengthened in the students after completing the project at the internship company:
– They learn to work in teams
– They learn to understand and apply the course literature in practice
– They become aware of their strengths and weaknesses in the context
– They develop their problem solving skills
– They develop a self-confidence to handle similar projects in the future

Skills have been strengthened in all students, but there are differences in the skills that have developed most in students.

– Those who have worked on internal projects are even more likely than the others to say that they have become good at working in teams, at taking and giving feedback and that they are more confident about running similar projects in the future. Students in the external projects, on the other hand, are more likely than the others to have become better at networking. The differences depend on how the projects are designed, explains Joakim Winborg, who believes that the results have important implications for how future education in intrapreneurship can be organized.

Contact joakim.winborg@fek.lu.se

More about the article
The study was conducted by Joakim Winborg and Gustav Hägg, active at the Sten K Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship at Lund University. The research article is called The Role of work-integrated learning in preparing students for a corporate entrepreneurial career and is published in the scientific journal Education + Learning.