Intrapreneurship

By the time this From the Editor is published, I will have provided a presentation titled, Swimming in Two Seas –Intra and Entrepreneur Marketing at the OT SEE A Sea of OT Social Entrepreneurship Education & Fun online professional development program hosted by Duke University Occupational Therapy Doctorate Division and Faison Consulting. One of WORK’s editorial board members, Dr. Tomeico Faison, is the coordinator of this event.

I think most readers know the concept of entrepreneurship, but may be less familiar with the term, intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship is where an employee with an entrepreneurial mindset brings innovative ideas within the existing structures of their workplace. There are benefits to the workplace when there are workers who are intrapreneurial as it can improve employee morale and productivity, attract and make the most of in-house knowledge and talent, foster better retention, boost revenue and growth, and encourage widespread innovation [1]. Here’s an example of an intrapreneurial project that I worked on with two colleagues, another occupational therapy practitioner and a social worker. We identified that there was a gap in interprofessional leadership in healthcare and collaborated to write a proposal for internal university funding to create a five-month certificate to prepare health professionals with the skills to better coordinate and deliver services that ultimately would result in better health care outcomes. We received the funding from Boston University (BU) Digital Education Incubator Grant & BU’s Office of Distance Education to create the certificate. The interprofessional leadership in healthcare certificate using an alumni mentor approach has been delivered five times reaching over 120 healthcare professionals [2].

You may be thinking why wouldn’t we just be entrepreneurial and introduce this certificate independent of our place of employment? The answer is that we had a more limited risk within the employment structure for the development and implementation of the certificate than if we were to have done this on our own.

This issue contains 30 papers on topics such as decent work, insomnia, mental fatigue, burnout, workplace accommodations, musculoskeletal discomfort and cell phone use, and preparing employees with cancer to return to work.

The Editor’s Choice paper is titled, Factors influencing teacher wellbeing and burnout in schools: A scoping review by Sohail, Baghdady, Choi, Huynh, Whetten and Proeschold-Bel. Being a teacher, I was intrigued by what the authors reported in their paper: “The findings of this review suggested that emotion regulation, positive workplace milieu and teacher self-efficacy (feeling successful as teacher) are important factors fostering teachers’ wellbeing whilst negative workplace environment, and negative emotions along with feeling marginalized or bullied by coworkers are factors behind teacher burnout.”

Our monthly Learn at WORK podcast series starts in January 2024. I am delighted to share that Dr. Matheson will be our first guest on the podcast. Other scheduled guests are Dr. Valerie Rice and Dr. Lynn Shaw. Details about the podcast are on our website: workjournal.org/learn-work-podcast.

All my best,

Founding Editor, WORK

Occupational therapist & ergonomist

blogs.bu.edu/kjacobs/