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Read one way, it is a call to action for largeorganizations:wall off new initiatives to better unleash creative entrepreneurialzeal. Thisis the story told by Kelly Johnson’s skunk worksat Lockheedor the Macintosh pirateflag at Apple.That is an approach I have been taught and have championed in the past -whatbetter way to be a champion than to lead an innovation revolutionagainst thestatus quo?

However, the more I look at how people work,including myself, the more suspicious I get about the idea. It is truethat a well-executed skunk works eliminates some large-organizationbureaucratic problems and providessome of the deep-pocket benefits of executing under a big tent. It isalso true that such an approach comes withmany of the problems of entrepreneurial resource constraints whileproviding far less your-fate-is-in-your-hands motivation and disciplineon either the upside or downside. WhileI don’t have proof, I expect that such intrapreneurial ventures areactually morelikely to fail to meet expectations than comparable entrepreneurial ventures, and not justgiven updatedresearch about entrepreneurial success rates.

To help explain why, let me first outline some keypoints aboutlarge organizations, by which I mean market leaders orsovereign states that:

• Spenda lot of time estimatingand measuring “return on investment” or ROI. This is natural, since theytakein and spend a lot of money. Save 10% of $100M and suddenly you are inthemarket for your own low-end private island. Grow a $500M business by 10%andyou’re talking Caribbean island with an airport and fresh water.

• Activelymanage risk becausethey have a lot of stakeholders and a lot to lose. Again, perfectlynatural…everyoneis gunning for the guy out in front with a bag full of cash. Why do weall takeour shoes off to get on airplanes? Because in the sense of ‘protect andserve,’the government doesn’t want to risk losing us.

• Arelargely focused onexisting customers or citizens, or should be. Unless your customer baseisgrowing by ~20% annually, chances are you have more customers today thanyouwill attract new customers over the next five years. And if yourcountry, stateor province is growing faster than 20% a year…well, they have a pillfor that.

In short, large organizations regularly spend andmake a lotof money, and have a lot to lose, thanks to large customer bases.

Sound like an exciting, high-stakes place to workif youwant to have a big impact in the world? Yep. Sound like fertile groundfor an entrepreneurialventure? Nope.

To see why, consider what entrepreneurs do. We allhave our ownopinions, and a large hagiography has built up over the past couple ofdecadesin particular. I don’t want to rehash it all here, because I think myformerprofessor BillSahlmansums it up nicely: “They pursue opportunities beyond the tangibleresourcescurrently controlled by their organizations. And they’re driven toidentify newopportunities, not protect what their companies already have.”[emphasis added]

That is not what intrapreneurs do. Here is mydefinition of an intrapreneur, using the same format: “They pursueopportunities leveraging theconsiderable resources currently controlled by their organizations.And they’re driven toidentify missed opportunities, finding new ways to extend whattheir companies alreadyhave.”

What are the key similarities and differencesbetweenwhat entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs do? 

In otherwords, intrapreneurs see missed opportunities, know howto work the system, and are pragmatic andpersistent as hell.

So why not raise theentrepreneurial pirate flag over your skunk works project and sallyforth? Because you leave your organizations biggest strengths behind,and take on all the risks of a start-up, only without the same carrotsand sticks. As inspiringas it is to imagine a young boy’s sling stone taking out a giant, youcan have greater impact by standing on the shoulders of giantsand steering their course than by hoping for a lucky strike.

So why does the literature abound with exhortationsto ‘be entrepreneurial,’ and braggadocio about ‘entrepreneurialcultures’? Because the entrepreneurial myth is a good story that you cansell like sugar water because every business was started by anentrepreneur, and business begins and ends with BS. ‘Be entrepreneurial’is not pragmatic advice for the next wave of intrapreneurs.

If nothing else, intrapreneurs hadbetter be pragmatic. While it’s great to beking of the hill, it can be extremely frustrating to try to innovateinside large, successful,risk averse organizations. Especially when you are shackled to the baneofevery intrapreneur’s existence: existing enterprise systems. Waving thepirate flag is one way to try scaring away that boogey man. But anotherway is emerging…and that is a story foranother day.

Fancy yourself anentrepreneur? Then hit the bricks and get to work, but do yourself afavor and do it somewhere else.

Determined to bepart of a new crop of intrapreneurs? Follow me on Twitter @erikdlarson.

It is also hard to argue with the idea that the top sites today are run by companies with living or even active founders…except that ten out of the top ten sites point people to content or businesses created by people outside the organization. So who’s really running them after all? Does more money move through JP Morgan and the IRS, or Google and Facebook? I’m sorry to say, but unfortunately the IRS wins that one by a country mile…and JP Morgan made three times Google’s revenue with a balance sheet fifty times bigger.

It is hard to argue with the overwhelming success of entrepreneurs at creating value in the world, since every company was founded by somebody…who hasn’t heard the stat that 65% of new jobs in America are created by small companies? Except when you look at the fact that the largest 0.3% of companies create the other 35% of jobs, many of which are highly paid.

I believe there is another side to the story of the Internet and the way the world works, a theme that will come to dominate the way we think about the impact of the Internet in the coming decade. And it will be driven by people I call intrapreneurs at work within large organizations.

These intrapreneurs will bring together well established trends in information technology, customer expectations, and business leadership to have more impact on humanity’s collective productivity than all the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have so far…some even working within the more venerable of the tech titans to show the way.

Clearly the audience of this blog is not the stereotypical breathless twenty-something wunderkind Larry-Page-in-waiting. Nor is it the star-making venture capitalist on Sand Hill Road.

Instead, Intrapreneur 2.0 is for a new crop of business leaders within large enterprises and government agencies who see what can be done with the Internet in their daily visits to Facebook, YouTube and Amazon.com, and aim to provide a similarly authentic, engaging and convenient experience for their customers and citizens.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll start with a discussion of the dynamics of large enterprises, the similarities and differences between intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs, and the fallacies and truths about what Facebook, YouTube and Amazon.com mean for business and government.

Then I’ll move on to what I hope will be the bulk of my postings – vignettes and profiles of intrapreneurs and their challenges…starting with a story of my own intrapreneurial failures. Given the pragmatic, and often politically sensitive, nature of most intrapreneurial ventures, I expect many of these stories will have to be masked to protect the aspirants.

I also expect that as this trend takes hold, soon all of our lives and businesses will be touched by their successes, and you will regularly read of the new crop of intrapreneurs in much more august journals than this one. And maybe Intrepreneur 2.0 will mark the end of the line of 2.0 metaphors (I hope so…if anyone has a better idea for a metaphorical modifier that means “the next phase” please let me know…I tried i-Intrapreneur and e-Intrapreneur, but neither roll off the tongue .

Finally, you can follow me on Twitter @erikdlarson if you’d like.