Sandrine Delage, BNP Paribas: "With Intrapreneurship, Transformation Is Driven by Employees Themselves"

Intrapreneurship is growing in many large organisations, including BNP Paribas. This model, which allows employees to become internal entrepreneurs while benefiting from company support, is a win for everyone. It is even an excellent driver of organisational transformation, as Sandrine Delage, an intrapreneur at BNP Paribas, recently explained to us. Interview.

Hello Sandrine, you are an intrapreneur at BNP Paribas. Can you tell us what that involves?

I run a learning lab at BNP Paribas called Change Makers & Prospective. Among other things, we develop digital literacy through the EnjoyDigitAll initiative. This has an external dimension — a Twitter account where we share best practices — and an internal one, involving workshops run by employees themselves on topics such as artificial intelligence and chatbots. The goal is to demystify and make digital technology accessible, with employees at the centre of the process.

This is the project I developed four years ago as an intrapreneur. My aim was to tackle the digital divide, which also affects employees of large organisations. I was deeply aware of both the power of digital technology and the sense of exclusion it can create.

Read also: Myriam Gorlier: "The way we use artificial intelligence will determine whether it becomes a value-creating or value-destroying technology for humanity"

Digital can be very accessible, provided people are supported in a "tribe mode". That's also what led me to write on the subject: I created a blog with my daughter to offer a cross-generational perspective.

In parallel, I took on responsibility for the People's Lab4Good, the Group's intrapreneurship programme, which welcomes employees with positive-impact project ideas. One of the key goals is to explore new business models that meet societal and environmental expectations. This search for new models reminds me of the early days of the digital revolution, when profitability was being questioned with the arrival of the Internet.

Intrapreneurship and digital transformation: what's the connection?

Sandrine Delage. The intrapreneur is at the heart of transformation and innovation. Here, change comes from an employee who combines personal and professional convictions to propose an innovative product. This is precisely what makes the transformation driven from within — by employees themselves — so powerful and distinctive!

Do you think companies that embrace intrapreneurship accelerate their digital transformation?

Sandrine Delage. Absolutely. They accelerate their transformation full stop!

Read also: Nelly Brossard: "When used wisely, technology tools can create and strengthen social bonds"

And at three levels:

• from a business perspective: intrapreneurship explores new business models — for example, around usage-based and subscription models rather than traditional buy-sell approaches…

• from an engagement perspective: an intrapreneur is connected to hundreds of people across the organisation: colleagues, managers, executive committee members, etc. This allows them to make their project resonate across all departments and become an agent of change

• from a startup methodology perspective: like entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs use startup methodologies that provide a fresh understanding of needs and the broader environment. They bring new culture and new practices to the way projects are run.

All of this facilitates transformation. Intrapreneurship enables people to become actors of both individual and collective transformation.

But concretely, what does this change for these companies on a daily basis?

Sandrine Delage. A great deal! I believe first and foremost that the transformation occurs at the operational level through the innovative solution championed by the intrapreneur.

Read also: Merete Buljo: "To succeed in your digital transformation, you have to be ready to completely reinvent yourself"

Internally at BNP Paribas, we have what we call "sponsors" — decision-making managers who "buy" projects, on the same principle as a funding round, except it's internal. Intrapreneurs must go out internally, meet these managers and pitch their solution so that the managers ultimately fund their project. By agreeing to support different and innovative projects, managers become project ambassadors. A chain of Change Makers is created at all levels.

It also seems to me that the development of intrapreneurship structures concretises the company's belief that employees can be genuine agents of transformation. At BNP Paribas, there are several intrapreneurship structures across the business lines, as well as the cross-cutting group programme — the People's Lab4Good — which allows project champions to prototype their positive-impact idea and build an internal ecosystem to deploy it. We offer real training time, with a variety of support structures. Because it can be difficult for an intrapreneur to go it alone at the beginning.

Is it difficult to be an intrapreneur?

Difficult isn't the word I would use. An intrapreneur has to be committed. They give meaning to their work, prove they are useful and aligned. And through that strength and energy, they manage to convince others. But of course, it requires a major investment.

Intrapreneur vs entrepreneur — what's the difference?

Sandrine Delage. I'd say it's very similar to being an entrepreneur. There's only one letter of difference between the two words! That said, there are differences. For intrapreneurs, the challenging part can be not being 100% on the project at the start — they take on the intrapreneurship role gradually. Intrapreneurs also have the financial support of the company and retain job security, which is a fundamental difference. But beyond that, it's very similar. We use the same working methodologies, go through the same stages and experience the same moments of doubt!

If you had just one piece of advice to give companies, what would it be? Intrapreneurship for everyone?

Sandrine Delage. Why not! Everyone has the ability to be an actor by proposing concrete ideas and solutions. But my main advice is above all to think carefully about purpose. If a company is not committed to the purpose behind its transformation, it will be difficult to engage employees. Purpose is the essential prerequisite for any transformation. And it's exciting to observe that digital transformation is just one step — we are already in the next revolution, that of positive impact. These two revolutions are connected. Digital enables us to create links with the capacity to accelerate interactions. And positive impact is the ability to take all stakeholders into account — society and the planet included. Everything aligns. From digital to positive impact, it's just one step.