TL;DR

Entrepreneurship isn’t about owning a business—it’s about owning a mindset. Some of the world’s biggest breakthroughs came from employees who acted like entrepreneurs inside their organizations. Find purpose beyond your paycheck, make your mark, and treat every challenge as training for the future. Intrapreneurship is entrepreneurship with a different address.

The Myth of Entrepreneurship

Do you really need to start your own venture to be called an entrepreneur?

Most people think entrepreneurship only happens when you quit your job, raise funds, and start a company. But that’s not the whole truth.

Entrepreneurship is not just about owning a business. It’s about owning a mindset. It’s about being curious, innovative, and proactive—no matter where you are working.

Some of the world’s biggest breakthroughs have come not from garage startups but from employees who acted like entrepreneurs inside their organizations.

The Problem with “Just a Job”

One of the biggest problems today is that many people do a job just for the sake of doing it. They don’t enjoy it. They don’t see meaning in it. They wait for weekends and salaries.

But here’s the trick: Find a purpose for doing your job that goes beyond making money.

Purpose could be as simple as:

  • Making a process more efficient
  • Improving customer experience
  • Helping your team work better together
  • Learning something new every week

And perhaps the most important purpose of all: To make your mark and make a difference.

The Learning Mindset

People can also remind themselves: “I’m not just working for money—I’m working to learn.”

Every time you solve a problem or do something better, you’re building skills and experiences that you can carry forward. What you improve today, you can apply tomorrow—whether in another organization or even in your own venture someday.

Intrapreneurship, then, becomes your training ground for entrepreneurship. Every challenge becomes a lesson. Every improvement becomes a rehearsal. Every skill becomes a tool for the future.

My Journey: Living Intrapreneurship

This isn’t just theory for me—it’s been my journey.

In 1993, I began my career at Bokaro Steel Plant. Even as a fresh engineer, I kept asking: how can things be done better?

By 1996–97, I helped launch a BBS (Bulletin Board System)—which became a kind of mini-ISP for my town, providing email and newsgroups to dial-up users in an era when the internet wasn’t even available locally.

In 2001, while working at Netkraft in Bangalore, this same mindset motivated me to study, figure out, and deploy the organization’s first firewall using iptables—not because someone asked me, but because I wanted to make a difference.

From 2004 to 2021, I carried that same spirit into my startup journey. For 17 years, through ups and downs, this mindset of questioning, improving, and innovating kept me going—always challenging the status quo and building something better.

But here’s a funny truth I learned the hard way: in those years, I focused so much on innovation that I missed the other half of entrepreneurship—business and customers. Maybe I naively assumed, “If I build something great, customers will automatically come.” Reality taught me otherwise.

And since 2021, I have been continuing the same journey within an organization—this time as an intrapreneur.

Beyond Following the Herd

It’s not just about challenging systems. It’s about challenging the obvious, the traditional, the conventional. It’s about not following the herd like a sheep—and instead, looking beyond the herd, creatively, like an innovator.

The Challenge

So here’s my challenge to you: Tomorrow, when you walk into your workplace, don’t just “do your job.”

  • Find your purpose
  • Learn
  • Make your mark
  • Be an intrapreneur
  • Spot one thing that can be done better
  • Take ownership
  • Experiment
  • Inspire

Because at the end of the day—intrapreneurship is entrepreneurship, just with a different address.

Editorial Note

This article was originally published on LinkedIn and has been revised for uk4.in.

Original publication date: 2025-09-27

Original link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/intrapreneurship-wake-up-entrepreneur-within-uttam-jaiswal-kcklc/