So my story is one of "Intrapreneurship"… applying entrepreneurial skills to pursue new opportunities for your company and in doing so, create new exciting career opportunities for yourself.  If your career ambition is driven by a desire for personal impact on society at large, then leveraging corporate scale might be as effective as going it alone.

In summer 2011, I joined IBM in the midst of it centenary year, celebrating its role in technology leadership from the personal computer to the moon landing.  And as I looked at the vast portfolio of solutions, I bought into the IBM Smarter Planet vision, aligning good business by tackling global and societal problems.

However, there seemed a gap in the solution set.  It appeared that our planets greatest challenge of our time - the challenge of global inequality - was not being directly addressed by an IBM business unit or solution set.  And this is hardly surprising. Despite the popular support for Prahalad's Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, few companies have found business models that effectively serve this market at scale.

So coming into IBM fresh from my Sainsbury Management Fellows-sponsored MBA, and full of the naïve optimism of a newbie, I set about finding the business models that might harness the collective power of such a great institution - 430,000 employees, and $6bn a year in R&D - to address this challenge: and not by way of philanthropy or traditional CSR; but with the conviction with which business pursues attractive growth opportunities.

And so outside my day job as a strategy consultant, I launched IBM Smarter Impact. Through a certain amount of belligerence and networking, the concept has evolved over the past year and a half into a global initiative with global resources. So I'd like to use this blog to air some thoughts on intrapreneurship before concluding with a brief word on where the Smarter Impact journey has led…

Encouraging intrapreneurship in large organisations…

Large corporations typically require a disciplined structure of business unit, product and industry alignment, a discipline that enables predictable business performance on a quarterly basis.  My view is that there is a temptation to leave innovation to the R&D department, however successful a company might be at churning out patents.

However, many game-changing business innovations originate from employees who spot a business opportunity that cuts across traditional organisational silos.   For a systematic solution, companies must encourage the behaviours that are required to drive these ideas in their early gestation.  This requires the right recruitment, incentive and promotion policies, so that the middle and senior leadership are populated with leaders who at least recognise, if not exhibit, true entrepreneurial behaviours.  The organisation must then have the platforms to accept or reject the new ideas once they have reached a period of maturity.

• Recruit the right blend of employee, and look out for those with an entrepreneurial spark.

• Ensure there is an entrepreneurial element within formal training programs.

• Use the formal mentoring structure to encourage pursuit of ideas in their early stages.

• Allow employees some leeway to work on their pet projects on the side of the day jobs, and recognise these activities in their remuneration review.

• Find a platform for sponsorship of new business opportunities. But not too early in the life of the idea, perhaps once a first sale has been achieved or the model proven as commercially viable. This ensures that the employee has the tenacity to stick with their idea, and the conviction to see it through.

What makes a good intrapreneur?

Like the entrepreneur, the intrepreneur has the benefit of being able to create and lead new ventures at any stage of their career and not just once a senior position has been attained. Also like the entrepreneur, they work with limited resources - even including their own time.  Therefore similar skills are required to improvise, acquire resources and build momentum.

But there are additional skills required by the intrapreneur. At a recent meeting with a large UK city council, it was proposed that there are three types of city leaders: Political leaders, Thought-leaders and Managerial leaders. The rational was that an effective city leader will be one of the three.  Which got me thinking about intrapreneurs... It seems to me that the most effective intrapreneurs need to be pretty good at all three.  In the context of driving change and innovation in a large company, this means:

Political leadership - managing up, don't always ask for permission, ask for advice to unlock resources and help. Identify some senior sponsors, and in doing so, choose the most appropriate 'home' within the organisation.  For example, the momentum behind Smarter Impact has benefited greatly from positioning as a surrogate of IBM's Smarter Cities business.

Thought-leadership - taking ownership of the idea, find other global thought-leaders through blogs and networks, participate in the debate and help move the conversation on.

Managerial leadership - an ability to manage sideways and downwards to galvanise support and herd existing disparate efforts/initiatives into a critical mass of success stories. An ability to secure additional resources on limited budgets: for example, leveraging university relations as a source of bandwidth and innovation*.

Take my IBM colleague Rick Robinson, a global thought-leader on smarter cities.  Rick may be famous for his thought and technical leadership around data solutions for cities, but he also displays the other traits of a highly effective intrapreneur.

(*As a side note, Universities are always looking for interesting commercial, explorative projects, but having witnessed from both sides, too often these are badly conceived, poorly supported and then stray off the desired outcome. The academic teams need leading and motivating and then the output can be fantastic. For example check out this video delivered by LSE for Smarter Impact and the city of Rio de Janeiro after just 3 weeks of work).

So where is Smarter Impact today?

Smarter Impact was publicly launched at a London conference in September 2012, an event I actually missed as it coincided with the birth of my first child!

This event engaged participants from across private, public and third sector, and really moved on the discussion.  Smarter Impact has now crystallized into a mechanism for new partnerships between private, public and third sector to drive inclusive economic development.  It has evolved a suite of data-driven solutions, which capitalise on exciting new sources of data and connectivity, such as the proliferation of mobile data and crowd sourcing.  While originally pitched at the international development sector, the principles are now being applied to drive social inclusion agendas in our UK city partnerships.  Crucially for its future in IBM, Smarter Impact is now bringing in revenue and opening up new lines of dialogue between global leaders from the World Economic Forum to Sunderland City Council.

Phil is Business Development Executive for IBM's Smarter Cities business in SE Asia, and global leader of IBM Smarter Impact. For more information contact Phil (phil.westcott@uk.ibm.com).

My co-blogger George Fowkes'  Guide to Entrepreneurship - Getting Started posted last October about the key steps of how to get started and a priority list of the key things to think about in the early stages.  So I thought I would complement his post with some practical tips that you won't find in the textbooks.

At this stage you have a great idea that you are pretty sure can withstand the blows of competitors and make you some money. If you are going to take your idea forward into a business, the next thing you must do is set up a company. At this stage, it doesn't matter too much what the company is called; you can always change it or set up a subsidiary with a more suitable company name later.  The UK is, in my experience, the easiest country in the world to setup a company. You can actually do it online in about 5 minutes and it only costs a few pounds! (Get the details from Companies House website.)

So why the urgency? Because it's a quirky fact of life - especially in this day and age of heightened transparency - that most of your stakeholders (future employees, banks and clients) will assess your credibility first and foremost by the period of time that you have been in business - i.e. since your company was born! For example, most banks won't extend credit to companies that have been in business for less than 6 months old - regardless of how much sales revenue they generate, so you might as well start the clock ticking. Completely meaningless and outdated, but that's how it is. Now here's the clever bit: get your newco set up now and hey presto in less than 365 days time your "Founded in 2013" cachet will make you one year old in the eyes of most stakeholders!

Tip 2: Know your numbers

By this I do not mean do a business plan. I'll get to that in my next post entitled "Getting Funding". I mean figure out what is the minimum you need to achieve to ensure you don't go bust. The former Cabinet Minister and über successful publishing mogul, Michael Heseltine, is famously attributed with doing the numbers for his publishing business on the back of an envelope.

In my view you should be doing precisely that too. In any business only a few key numbers drive the whole profit equation and its imperative that you know what they are and understand them simply enough to do the calculation "on the back of an envelope". Now, I appreciate that as a business grows it can get more complicated, but at the very least, you should be able to do the calculation to the point where you understand the "break-even" - in other words, working backwards to understand how much you need to sell to cover your operating costs.

Here's an example that I use with prospective franchisees of my écurie25 Supercar Club concept:

KEY COSTS per month:

Staff - £10,000

Cars - £15,000 (5 cars @ average £3,000 per car per month)

Rent - £4,000

Marketing - £2,000

Other -£5,000 (round number factoring in insurance, service costs, professional fees, admin, etc)

TOTAL £36,000

On the REVENUE side

Average Membership (customer) Income per member per month (net of vat) - £1,200

Hence, the number of members required to hit break-even = 36000/1200 = 30

[Sanity check: Number of members that a club with 5 cars can support 40]

So, that's it. If you wanted to start a Supercar Club, you'd need to ask yourself whether you could recruit 30 customers, at least.

Of course, you can go on from there to calculate how much money you would make with 40 customers, 60, etc and certainly you might have to add in more costs (supercars, in this case) to support the expansion; and of course there may well be start-up costs such as license fees, and fit-out costs and also other sources of income such as delivery charges and venue hire and so on.  Of course, there are many other revenue and cost items you can (and will) include in your business plan, but you now have your key metric that will shape your entire business thinking...I need 30 customers to break-even, let's call it 35 to be on the safe side!  So now your focus can start to address key questions such as: can the market support that number? Where would I get them from? How many customers can I count on from my current network?

Tip 3: Ignore your customers

Well, at least for the time being. I know I'm flying in the face of convention on this one but here goes... I don't advocate customer market research for start-ups! Henry Ford reputedly once said, "If I asked my customers what kind of car they wanted, they would say a faster horse". When working in established markets, customers are very good at knowing what they want. But in the land of entrepreneurs, where hopefully you are bringing something to market that is a bit ground-breaking/innovative/disruptive, your potential customers are not the best source of feedback. By all means do canvas their opinions, but be prepared to take what they say with a pinch of salt. In reality most people are not that innovative; they are reluctant to accept change and slow to absorb great ideas even when they see them.

I find a much more beneficial route for entrepreneurial ventures is to undertake market research through talking with competitors (or "close-competitors" if there's nobody doing exactly what you do), potential partners and key suppliers in the sector. Certainly, if what you are doing has been tried before, they will know, and more importantly they will have a good idea why your idea won't work or didn't work (in the past) which will help you refine your proposition to maximise the chances of success.

Of course you're probably now wondering how you do that without giving away your top secret plans. Well, you need to be smart - talk to them in roundabout ways or share only a part of your secret sauce to ascertain whether it's an area that they have considered before, or are considering right now. In my experience, most people like to meet and discuss - in this era people understand that today's competitor is tomorrow's partner and an open information exchange with a current or potential player has value to them too. Just be careful and understand your boundaries about what you are willing to share well. Prepare beforehand and don't allow yourself to overstep the mark.

If you don't feel you can talk to competitors, vendors and partners then mystery shop them - either yourself or through an agent as the case may be.

Tip 4: Defend your IP

If there is an element of internet or web identity in your proposition (and there should be), then do spend a bit of money now making sure you have conducted some legal searches to ensure you are not treading on anyone's toes, and simultaneously taking the necessary step to protect your IP (intellectual property). It may be a painful expenditure at this stage in the start-up cycle, but the harsh truth is that the later you leave it the less "protectable" it becomes. A few well-spent pounds now could save you a fortune in legal fees or lost business later.

Tip 5: Focus on "frustomers"

In early stage business, sales can be divided into two groups: personal sales and "others".

Personal sales relate to customers that know you from before (friendly customers or frustomers).  Either they bought from you in a past life, or know (of) you from your previous achievements.  The key is that these people are buying you and your reputation, not the product/service that you are going to create.  Therefore, you can sell to these people before you have even made the product - perhaps a concept or prototype is sufficient for them.  Of course, I don't mean literally that you can get a cheque from them, but you can explain what you are planning to do and should be able to gain a significant degree of commitment - emotional, letter of intent, handshake, heartfelt promise - from at least some of them that helps you increase your confidence about your early-stage sales trajectory.

Note: If you are struggling to get sales commitments from this group, or don't know anybody in this group, think very carefully about whether and how you wish to proceed. You're probably doing something seriously wrong.

The "others" group don't know you and it's not worth trying to pitch to them too soon; if anything, you will lose credibility and make selling to them even harder later on.

In summary, most of this post has been dedicated to eliminating downside risk before you go off and start spending major chunks of money creating your product and bringing it to market. If you address these steps effectively, you should have moved from having a great idea to a new business and you should also be feeling pretty good about your future prospects for this business - without actually having spent more than a few thousand pounds in getting there.

In the final year of my undergraduate Engineering studies, as part of an entrepreneurship module, I attended a lecture given by two recent engineering graduates. They had started a company after university and were now running a three year old, multi-million pound business.  The stories they told of starting the company in desperate surroundings sounded almost romantic.  Their do-or-die attitude allowed them to survive the early days - but only by the skin of their teeth; they relied on paying their first employees with sandwiches and finding their first customer only thanks to a serendipitous misunderstanding.

The tale of their struggles, from a worthless, bedroom-based entity to a company with plans for international expansion, filled me with excitement.  Even more exciting was their plan to sell the business only four years after graduating.  In talking about the sale, the numbers they bandied around suggested they could not have retired - but a first (and probably a second) home wasn't out of the question.

As I left the lecture hall, my mind was filled with possibilities. The notion that one could earn a living, and more, by pursuing one's own dream held some ideals and inspired me.  So I decided I was going to do it.  Job offers would be ignored (they weren't that interesting anyway), caution would be hurled to the wind and I would go and work for myself. 12 years later, I finally got started.

I have often wondered why it took me so long.

The problem is that getting started is not romantic.  It involves hard work and uncertainty.   When you get started working for yourself, there is no structure or framework to guide you. There is no boss to check you are on time or that your work is on target; and nobody senior to whom you can defer when things go awry.  Instead, you must develop the discipline and skill to do these sorts of things for yourself.  This requires commitment and sacrifice and is a marked transition from what I had been used to at school or in previous employment.  Getting started also tends to be all-encompassing.  Success is often only achieved through delayed gratification; putting off holidays and buying a home or even having a family later on.

This is hard; I found it much easier to convince myself that the reason I hadn't got started yet was because of funding problems or the idea wasn't quite right (or even very good).  I was often able to build up the enthusiasm about a particular new piece of technology or business model - only to find that enthusiasm dampened a few weeks or months later thanks to some further analysis and a natural inclination to be sceptical (I am an engineer after all!).

I suppose the point is that getting started is, ultimately, a leap of faith that requires courage and confidence to undertake.  The popular media suggests starting a company is glamorous, highlighting personalities like Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and those guys who sold Instagram for a billion.  But the reality of giving up the structure and relative normality of employment can be quite unglamorous.

In my case, there were two key elements to helping me take the plunge and get started launching a new venture.  The first was confidence. This was thanks in no small part to my studies for an MBA whilst at INSEAD in France.  Not necessarily for the technical skills but for the opportunity to immerse myself in an entrepreneurial community. To understand on a very practical level the steps that could be taken to get started.  Developing plans and ideas in this environment felt natural; help was never far away if I had problems.  As much as anything, it showed me that getting started was not rocket science.  The idea did not have to be perfect.  Raising capital was possible. It was extremely reassuring to see how it was done first hand.

The second element was realising the necessity of working on a venture in a team.  Whilst operating alone enables complete autonomy, in my experience exchanging this for the opportunity to share and discuss issues and problems is a trade well worth making.  Since getting started myself, I am always amazed at how often problems that seem insurmountable can be chewed on, processed and solved by discussing with a partner or team of like-minded passionate individuals.  And, for me, winning as part of a team has always been better than winning alone.

Getting started and being successful in a new venture requires confidence and tenacity as well as good fortune and stamina.  For me, it has been both stimulating and exciting.  There have been setbacks and it has been important to remember to stay optimistic no matter what has gone wrong. However, I have learnt a great deal and been exposed to wild and varied situations which have been fascinating and will, I feel, be invaluable in my career going forward.

I believe the venture in which I am involved will be successful.  But if it is not, I doubt I will regret much.  For in the end, it is the exposure to those wild situations and the experience of those setbacks that creates the romance and glamour of getting started - and this is really what I was after in the first place.

Before I start I wanted to add to Chirag's post by nominating David Hansson, the founder of software company 37Signals, as the international grandmaster of 'CARD'. And in fact most things about getting a business started. I think he has written a book but his speech at Stanford boils his whole philosophy down into one irreverent hour that you can laugh along to on your way to work.

If I had to summarise the very best of what I've seen in the past 12 years of getting ventures started for people, it would be the following:

Find a complementary partner

Most people think that the expression 'better to own a share of something than 100% of nothing' came about from raising money.  That may be true, but it's even more relevant right at the beginning.  To get any new organisation started is such a huge amount of work, requiring so many judgement calls and such a very wide range of skills, that even an engineer with an MBA cannot do it on their own.  You can't be world class at everything, and it's lonely flying completely solo.

If I think of the half dozen really successful serial entrepreneurs that I've met - the people who have built and successfully sold more than one business - almost without exception they work with a business partner.  That partner doesn't just fill a skills gap with their co-entrepreneur, they also fill what I'll call a 'character gap', as follows.

Everyone has a number of aspects of the business that they can't help preferring.  It could be sales.  Or the numbers.  Or building the team.  It's very difficult indeed for an individual not to give these preference - it's part of their character - so stuff gets missed.  The partner has an innate preference for different aspects of the organisation.  Their first thought on Monday morning is quite different to their co-partner.  And so most of the bases get covered.  That's why you see sales people paired up in business with accountants, marketeers with ops people, Myers-Briggs introverts with extroverts, and so on.

So my point would be to find someone who's quite different to you that you can trust implicitly and make them a significant partner in the business.  And even (especially) if you're married to them, sign an agreement that at least covers what happens if things don't work out.

Touch the market early and often

With the very rare exception that essentially comes down to luck, it is not possible to bring a successful new product or service to market without first exposing it to the target market.  To compete against better-resourced incumbents your product or service has to not just work, but fit the way its users look for, assess, buy and use the thing.

For the product itself we need to bring the alpha and beta-test principle common in software development to our own business idea.  How to do this depends largely on the nature of the product, but everybody should be able to find their own versions of customer and competitor interviews, pitching the concept to friendly contacts in the target market prior to development, lending prototypes to prospective customers, offering 'no-regrets' deals for early buyers and so on, as the feedback from this user experience is essential. The next proof point is the one where customers actually part with their cash for the product.  Hansson is right that this cannot come too soon and, in general, almost any way to bring early revenue into the business (that does not distract from the main development effort) is a good idea.

Closely linked to this, especially in B2B markets, is that your product can only be successful in the context of the buying patterns in the target market.  Every market has its idiosyncratic way in which solutions are sought and evaluated, buying decisions made, price and delivery negotiated.  And if you're not compatible with the time of year, use of OJEU, 'Plan A', Environment Agency regs, contract management or other trivial necessity you won't sell any product to that sector.  The least costly way to master an industry's buying patterns that I have seen is to get an industry veteran on the board.

Have a plan

It is true that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but keeping a plan (i.e. a list of milestones/targets and dates, with associated responsibilities and costs) updated on a regular basis confers many benefits.  First, putting the plan together forces you to think about priorities and risk.  What's got to go right, and cheap ways to stop things going wrong.  Second, it's a fantastic communication tool.  With a plan everyone can see where the effort has to go.  Scope creep - possible the worst enemy of the pre-revenue business - is easier to keep at bay.  And finally, it enforces realism.  Not all milestones will be met. The insights from 'why not' and 'by how much' make achieving future targets more likely.  And achieving targets is an essential skill to keep investors putting money into a business.  So put together a plan and keep it with you.  If you have to keep changing it, at least you're learning!

None of this covers seed funding, getting an office, or marketing, recruiting and financing on the cheap, which will have to wait for another day. Or be picked up by another blogger.

Most people think the biggest obstacle to getting started with a new business is coming up with a really great idea. But this generally isn't the case. Ideas are all around us and mostly come from finding solutions to our problems.

Unless your name is Jesus and you can simply perform miracles whenever you hit a problem, we generally tend to address problems by tolerating them or avoiding them. The key to successful entrepreneurship lies here. Instead of living with your frustrations, take the extra few seconds to challenge the issue and explore how you might solve the problem. The answer could be your business idea!

In my experience, the much more challenging aspect to getting started is turning the idea into a viable business proposition. To illustrate, I'm going to use as an example my 19 year-old cousin - who has half a dozen more new ideas every time I see him. He'll be a great entrepreneur one day but first he needs to overcome what I call the "CARD-test". In order for an idea to become a successful business it needs to be Commercial, Aligned with resources, Relevant (to you) and Defensible.

An idea my cousin had when we were 15 was the concept of having a rotating sunlounger. Just like a sunflower, the lounger would turn slowly during the day saving the users from having to get up and move the lounger themselves.

Commerical

Applying the "Commercial" test, the key question is: "can you make money from the idea?" If one manufactured the product, would there be enough sales to offset the manufacturing and distribution costs and still leave some profit leftover? In the case of the rotating sunbed, I'm not sure 'enough' users would pay the necessary sum to avoid getting up and turning the lounger themselves.

Aligned with resources

Another idea he had was to build a field of solar panels and sell the electricity, whilst growing some vegetables in the shade. In the right circumstances this idea can meet the Commerciality clause, and indeed there are such implementations around the world. Alas, for my poor cousin, he does not have enough money to implement this idea nor could he hope to raise sufficient funds from other people given his lack of previous experience as a farmer or energy consultant or similar. So for my cousin, this idea falls down because it is not 'aligned' with his level of resources. [A particular frustration of mine, and a reason why I think the green energy movement fails to reach breakthrough levels of adoption is that so many innovative projects very quickly require significant levels of capital to bring them to market and hence remain the remit of larger institutional sources which are inherently more risk averse than your average entrepreneur. Compare this with the Internet revolution where the cost of starting a business is very small and new business concepts dominate.]

Relevant (to you)

As a general rule of thumb I tend to advise budding entrepreneurs to focus on businesses that they actually know something about - by way of their prior work experience, or background, or specialist product knowledge, etc.  From the businesses I have seen people starting up around me, I would say your chances of success are less than 20% if you know nothing about a particular product or market, and probably closer to 80% if you have worked in that sector, already have relationships with potential customers, and are familiar with your competition. If you have a great idea in a sector you know nothing about, then getting a job in that sector is a great way to start.

Defensible

Defensibility, or Barriers to Entry as the academics would call it, refers to how difficult or easy it is for others to copy what you are doing. Patenting or copyrighting an idea is an important consideration but don't assume that just because an idea is patented it cannot be replicated or if an idea cannot be protected that others will definitely copy it. In any case I mention this criterion with lower priority than the others because a business lacking defensibility is not necessarily doomed to fail.

As you will see in later posts, how well and how quickly you execute your idea can play a much larger part towards its success and having imitators can even be a good thing. There are benefits to competition in terms of growing the size of a market that can outweigh the downsides of competing for business. For example, one of my own companies, écurie25 Supercar Clubs, is the global market leader for enthusiasts wishing to share the costs of owning a Ferrari but I actually wish we had more competitors because the sector would grow from the resulting greater awareness of such clubs. And I would rather have a smaller market share of a larger sector than a large share of a niche market.

Now that you have your idea in-hand and you've vetted it with the CARD Test, it is time to get started.  In my next post, I'll give you some tips for making sure you de-risk your venture as much as possible before you commit too much.

There has never been a greater need to prepare businessmen and women to become CEOs.  The biggest recession in 80 years, intense media scrutiny and investor nervousness all combine to make the top job tougher than ever.

When I was CEO of John Menzies - a £1.5bn quoted plc with a substantial family shareholding - it struck me that, as in any position, CEOs get better as they learn.  I certainly did.  But the old dictum "leaders are born and not made" still holds sway in many quarters.  We still expect CEOs to take on the toughest job in business without any specific preparation.

This seems a little strange!

So I've teamed up with David Sole, the well known international rugby captain and business coach, to launch the School for CEOs.   David has coached main Board directors and senior executives from a wide variety of functions including finance, human resources, sales and marketing, IT, property, legal and company secretariat.

Experienced businessmen and women will teach the next generation of business leaders using a carefully structured curriculum.   A highly accomplished Advisory Board will work with us, including Sir David Reid (Chairman of Intertek plc and ex-Chairman of Tesco plc), Jonathan Warburton (Chairman of Warburtons) and Alex Wilson (ex-Group HR Director at BT plc).

The two-day Vital Few residential programme will cover the complexities of

• managing up - forming a relationship with the Chairman and Board;
• managing down - leading the team;
• managing out - handling investors and the media; and
• managing in - staying centred and grounded.

Future leaders will explore what really happens in the boardroom, rather than academic theories and frameworks.  There will be follow on coaching to help embed the learnings, insight and wisdom gained on the programme.  And delegates will join a fantastic network which will grow as the School grows.

The Vital Few is a standalone programme.  It also forms the first module of the comprehensive Alchemy of Leadership programme which lasts eight days spread over several months.

The first programme takes place in London on 19/20 September.  It's aimed at anyone three years or less from becoming a CEO, as well as those already in the job..   For future programme dates, visit www.schoolforceos.com