Intrapreneurship: Who Owns the Idea?

Intrapreneurship empowers innovators within organizations to identify challenges and create solutions that transform care, processes, and systems. Unlike entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs operate within existing structures and rely on institutional resources — raising the central question: who owns the idea? This session explores the tension between individual creativity and organizational ownership, emphasizing how recognition, transparency, and clear policies influence whether innovators feel valued and supported. Frontline employees generate insights from lived experiences, while organizations provide the funding, infrastructure, and scale necessary to bring those ideas forward. Ownership, therefore, is best understood as a partnership rather than a competition. When ideas are co-owned, organizations build trust, foster innovation, and ensure lasting impact. The talk will also highlight how one health system encourages intrapreneurship through defined pathways to commercialization, engagement with the technology transfer office, and consideration of intellectual property, patents, and copyright. Ultimately, participants will gain practical insights into how intrapreneurship can unlock creativity, strengthen collaboration, and sustain meaningful change within complex systems.