Most organizations these days strive to be more innovative, with phrases such as intrapreneurship emerging to define the breed of employee that acts like an entrepreneur inside the company.

Traditionally entrepreneurs have been seen as a very different kind of person to your ‘organization man’, with their greater propensity for risk and higher creativity levels.  So how can entrepreneurship be encouraged internally?

A recent study suggests that the key may be simply to get people trying it.  It revealed that the more effort we put into our work in general, the more enthusiastic we then become about our entrepreneurial activity.

Innovation begets innovation

Just as success often begets success, it seems that when our innovations work, we’re much more likely to innovate in future.  This is especially so when we’re given free choice at work.

It reminds us that innovation can occur and flourish even when people aren’t that innovative to begin with.

The researchers tracked a group of German entrepreneurs to monitor the kind of things they did and the passion they had for their entrepreneurial activities.

The analysis revealed two clear trends.  Firstly, the effort they put into their work had a direct link to the passion they displayed, and this passion proved to be higher when effort was higher.

Starting the virtuous circle

To try and understand how this virtuous circle could be kick-started, the researchers explored the sense of achievement and freedom of choice entrepreneurs had, and how this linked in with their passion for the job.

Two groups were asked to develop a new business idea.  One of these was given positive feedback, whilst the other was given negative feedback.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the group who received negative feedback reported a drop in enthusiasm, whilst those who received positive feedback had a boost in motivation.

This was particularly pronounced when participants were given a high level of freedom for their ideas.

“Our results show that entrepreneurial passion is not a rigid personality trait, but a characteristic that may develop over time under certain conditions,” the authors say. “In our eyes, the widespread assumption that only those, who possess enthusiasm for entrepreneurship from the word go, should become entrepreneurs, is just wrong. The passion for entrepreneurship, rather, develops with the first entrepreneurial activity and success.”

So if you want to encourage innovation in your business, it might be a good idea to give employees plenty of encouragement and freedom to come up with new ideas.