Biomimicry and Social Intrapreneur

While at the recently concluded 2008 Net Impact conference (http://www.netimpact.org/), I attended a session on biomimicry. Off the three speakers, one of them spoke on using biomimicry in business. He explained concepts such as biomes (example deserts and rainforests) as a metaphor to describe various industry sectors and how a business should understand and adapt to its biome. Being pleasantly surprised, I asked the speaker after the session to point me to papers and articles on this new and developing concept. (I'll blog more on this session later)

And as I sit here reading a paper for my class tomorrow I come across an entersectional idea on social intrapreneurs. This picture taken from the report by SustainAbility on "The Social Intrapreneurs: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers" is describing the taxonomy of social intrapreneurship. It states that an intrapreneur seamlessly moves through two tactical roles as defined by a donkey and a wolf and two strategical roles as defined by a giraffe and a beaver in order to be successful. For more on what these descriptions mean go to page 30 of the report http://www.sustainability.com/search/results.asp?searchtext=social+intrapreneurship&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0)

Here's a brief description of each animal type:

Donkey - by the very nature of business there are loads to be borne and an intrpreneur reportedly carries out some pretty basic tasks as part of their work.

Wolf - lone wolf, akin to lone voice; intrapreneurs are champion lone voices responding to issues as they arise.

Giraffe - "my head in the clouds to inspire sustainable innovation, but with my feet firmly planted on ground, alongside the elephants."

Beaver - Intrapreneurs have the potential to profoundly reshape their landscapes and to create whole cascades of new opportunity for those around them.

There couldn't be a better way to make a sticky point on an intrapreneurs skills than this!