Drive Organizational Innovation: The Intrapreneurship Advantage

New Program: Coming in 2025

Master the art of leading intrapreneurial initiatives within your organization. Learn to turn challenges into opportunities, foster a culture of innovation and adaptability, and drive sustainable growth—all while managing internal and external constraints effectively. You'll gain the tools to transform leaders into catalysts for innovation, empowering them to harness uncertainty as a driver of growth and resilience

In this highly-applied program, you'll develop a tailored, comprehensive roadmap for solving your business's innovation challenge.

Shifting business climates, changing customer demands, and ongoing market disruptions mean that adapting to change is no longer sufficient — the future belongs to those who can proactively drive change from within. To achieve this, organizations need leaders who think like "intrapreneurs," combining entrepreneurial agility with the power of organizational resources.

This program, rooted in the Booth Approach, equips leaders with the intrepreneur's code for breakthrough innovation. You'll learn how to foster innovation by promoting experimentation and risk-taking, simplifying complex challenges into actionable, measurable plans, and creating a roadmap for initiatives that align with best practices. What's more, you'll learn how to transform your organizational constraints into a powerful competitive advantage for innovation.

You'll emerge with the capabilities to empower teams in championing innovation and solving real-world business problems.

By attending, you'll...

  • Embed intrapreneurship into your organization’s strategy and culture, promoting experimentation, risk-taking, and cross-functional collaboration.
  • Simplify complex challenges by designing actionable plans that deliver measurable results and meaningful progress.
  • Identify and nurture internal talent to champion and lead intrapreneurial initiatives.
  • Develop a personalized roadmap to scale intrapreneurial efforts aligned with proven best practices.
  • Reduce risks and barriers while building a resilient, adaptable workforce.
  • Leverage constraints and small-scale testing to create cost-effective, resourceful solutions.
  • Streamline processes to maintain focus, avoid overwhelm, and ensure measurable outcomes.

This program offers a dynamic blend of learning methods to ensure relevance and immediate applicability:

  • Interactive Discussions: Explore key concepts and share insights with peers.
  • Hands-On Activities: Engage in exercises tailored to real-world challenges.
  • Group Simulations: Practice intrapreneurship in collaborative, simulated environments.
  • Real-World Case Studies: Analyze successful innovation strategies and their outcomes.

Key benefits include:

  • Individualized Roadmap Development: Create a structured plan to guide internal innovation initiatives and foster a mindset shift across teams.
  • Project-Based Activities: Develop an actionable plan to accelerate business results and improve innovation performance, even with limited resources.
  • Clear Framework for Leadership: Learn to lead intrapreneurial efforts effectively, with strategies that drive measurable impact.

By the end of the program, participants will:

  • Be equipped with practical tools and actionable strategies.
  • Have a clear plan to implement intrapreneurial initiatives in their organizations immediately.

This program is designed for mid- to senior-level managers and executives who are responsible for creating value and driving growth within their organizations. It is particularly relevant for leaders in dynamic, fast-changing industries or sectors undergoing transformation.

The program is ideal for leaders across diverse industries and geographies, offering a globally relevant leadership experience tailored to today’s complex business environment.

Those seeking a more focused approach to responding to disruption, seeking to lower their reliance on high-cost and high-risk initiatives, and seeking to activate their teams and boost morale with innovation wins will all benefit.

Participant titles may include: Innovation Leader, Change Manager, Senior Project Manager, Operations Manager, Product Manager, Marketing Director, Business Development Manager, Strategy Lead, Human Resources Leader, Finance Manager, Technology Manager, and including Directors, Vice Presidents, and C-suite Executives.

 

James Janega

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship

James Janega is Managing Partner at Growth Innovation Strategy Group (GIS). GIS helps organizations see how the future will develop around them, find wins in changing environments, and build growth paths using agile strategies and better innovations.

Janega specializes in bridging the gap between strategy and innovation, particularly identifying growth opportunities and developing products and services that serve emerging market segments.

He has taught executives and worked with consulting clients around the world, serving sectors that include consumer goods and electronics, financial services, health care, commercial real estate and insurance, energy, education, and infrastructure. He has advised startups in AI and innovative technologies that include clean tech, precision optics, and quantum hardware.

Janega’s career brings a broad perspective to new activities. His two decades in journalism include 15 years at the Chicago Tribune Media Group. He helped develop the Strategy & Innovation group at Slalom Consulting Chicago, and worked in emerging opportunity areas at Cushman & Wakefield that included managing innovation strategy, new product strategy and development, and new business operations. He has served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the EnterpriseWorks incubator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2015, and is a startup advisor at the Duality quantum accelerator in Chicago.

Janega holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, an MA in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and a BA in journalism from Northern Illinois University.

When not teaching or consulting, Janega’s interests include laughing with his wife and their two children, exploring the outdoors, racing in Ironman triathlons, and performing jazz music.

Simone Ahuja

CEO, Blood Orange

Dr. Simone Ahuja is pioneering the idea of “intrapreneurship” and teaching organizations how to act more like fast and frugal startups, to drive sustainable innovation. Simone is the founder of Blood Orange, a global innovation and strategy firm headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is co-author of the international bestseller, Jugaad Innovation, called “the most comprehensive book yet on the subject” of frugal innovation by the Economist. Her latest book, Disrupt-It-Yourself, shares a clear set of tools and a practical playbook that helps organizations drive sustainable innovation by supporting “intrapreneurship” and acting more like fast and frugal startups.

Simone has served as an advisor to MIT’s Practical Impact Alliance and Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. She provides keynotes, interactive workshops, and innovation advisory services to organizations including United HealthGroup, 3M, Procter & Gamble, Target Corp, Stanley Black & Decker, and the World Economic Forum. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review online, and a practitioner of improvisational comedy.

Innovation Challenge: Unlocking the Intrapreneurship Advantage
At the outset of the program, participants will identify a key intrapreneurial challenge within their organization—such as launching a new initiative, driving innovation under constraints, or fostering a team culture of adaptability and creativity. With guidance from expert faculty and collaboration with program peers, participants will refine their approach using actionable feedback and program insights. By the end of the course, each participant will develop a tailored, intrapreneurship-focused plan to tackle their challenge and deliver measurable impact, empowering them to drive transformation from within.


MONDAY AFTERNOON

  • Introduce your individual projects
  • The Intrapreneurial Mindset
    Learn how to incorporate an intrapreneurial approach for success: break through barriers and align with your organizational strategy.

TUESDAY

  • Aligning Innovation with Corporate Strategy
    Evaluate your projects against organizational strategic priorities. You will craft concise, high-impact presentations to gain executive sponsorship, emphasizing alignment with broader strategic goals.
  • Identifying & Nurturing Internal Talent
    Assess your teams to identify intrapreneurs capable of driving your projects forward, and set them up for success.
  • Leveraging Constraints to Drive Creativity
    Identify constraints (e.g., budget, time, regulatory) within your projects and learn how to turn these limitations into creative opportunities.

  • Risk Reduction and Assumption Testing
    Reduce your projects' risk: Identify key assumptions within your projects and outline a plan to validate them using small-scale experiments and real-time feedback.

WEDNESDAY

  • Building Organizational Buy-In and Overcoming Resistance
    Create stakeholder engagement plans that use tailored communication strategies to secure buy-in, address resistance, and demonstrate the value of entrepreneurial innovation.
  • Innovation Metrics and Measuring Impact
    Refine your projects' success metrics and develop measurement plans to effectively track and demonstrate impact. Develop a plan to incentivize employee intrapreneurship.

THURSDAY

  • Implementing and Scaling Intrapreneurial Initiatives
    Develop an implementation and scaling plan, detailing how to expand successful small-scale experiments across the organization. Create a timeline and define scaling milestones.
  • Intrapreneurial Storytelling: Communicating Your Innovation Idea
    Craft a compelling communication strategy for your projects and gain buy-in for market launch. Incorporate practical techniques to secure funding, resources, or validation.

FRIDAY

  • Creating a Sustainable Intrapreneurial Culture
    Finalize your projects and develop long-term plans to sustain intrapreneurial efforts within your organization, fostering an enduring culture of innovation.

Post-program (90-min live online session)

Participants will reconvene virtually to share updates on their business challenges, receive ongoing feedback from peers and faculty, and discuss progress. This session promotes accountability, continued networking, and sustainable impac

 

Coming in Spring and Fall 2025

This five-day program is scheduled to be introduced in Spring 2025. If you’d like to stay updated, please complete the 'Keep Me Informed' form to receive additional details as they are released.