Most people are familiar with the term entrepreneur, but I would like to introduce you to the terms intrapreneur and infrapreneur.
An intrapreneur is an entrepreneur who establishes innovative change from the inside of an organization. An intrapreneur may be an employee in a corporation who creates a new program or service. Many times intrapreneurs are not as well known as entrepreneurs because their work comes from within an organization, rather than from the outside. Paul Buchheit is a successful intrapreneur who created Gmail while at Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, said, “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google.” The founders understood that dedicating time to new projects “empowers [employees] to be more creative and innovative.” Intrapreneurs prove that success and innovation do not necessarily mean going it alone, but rather using dedicated corporate resources to invent new products and ideas.
An infrapreneur is an entrepreneur who changes the infrastructure of society. Mark Zuckerberg is an infrapreneur. He founded Facebook and forever changed the way people communicate and share information. He upended social media and the way society interacts and “likes” different products and ideas.
