It has been a good many years since I first got my hands on a copy of Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur by Gifford Pinchot. Few books have had such a lasting impression on me. I have kept a copy close to hand in every office I’ve worked in since 1986.
If I had a dollar for every time I quoted from the book: “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” or warned a friend, “You don’t want to trigger the ‘corporate immune system,’ Bud,” I would be quite a few dollars better off than I am this morning. Of course, it would hardly be as I had billed it then, free advice!
Anyway…
I have been busy researching open source values and various concepts that fly in the face of my traditional upbringing. It is a struggle to reconcile what I have learned in a career spent leveraging competitive advantage with what I know is a better model given a whole new set of circumstances and the proliferation of enabling technologies.
Reading up on The Gift Economy I bumped into Mr. Pinchot again, writing on the very subject in In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture. Once again what he had to say resonated with me in the same way as when I first picked up Intraprenuering.
Read the rest of this entry » ‘Gifford Pinchot: A Gift That Keeps Giving’
Comebacks...