DECISION

The cable industry was built by entrepreneurs. But decades of success had turned a scrappy business into a handful of big incumbents, and somewhere in the growth the industry lost the instinct that built it: the ability to innovate from the inside.

The Cable Center, a nonprofit dedicated to the industry, decided to change that. Its leaders made the call. The industry’s future depended on a new generation who could think and act like intrapreneurs, and someone had to develop them. The Center committed to building the industry’s first intrapreneurship academy.

REASONABLE RESISTANCE

Even though The Cable Center’s members said they wanted a way for their people to build entrepreneurial and innovation skills, they struggled with the commitment.

The program’s design, created based on member input, ran into objections nobody could dismiss. It asked direct competitors to sit in the same room and share how they actually think about innovation, which every confidentiality instinct says never to do. It asked companies to give up time from their most promising people, the rising stars they could least spare: two days out of the office, then about four hours a week, ten percent of their time, layered on top of the day job. Each was a sensible reason to scope it down, delay it, or pass. Together they were enough to keep an industry’s best intentions sketched on paper.

ACTION

• Designed a ten-week, mostly-remote program with strict confidentiality built in, so competitors could learn side by side without exposing what they needed to protect
• Brought in cutting-edge thinking on innovation and how to implement it, from leading business schools and design firms
• Had each intrapreneur choose a real project from their own company, so every week’s lesson turned into progress their employer could see
• Coached participants one-on-one on applying the tools, working across their organization, reaching the right stakeholders, and leading change
• Built in networking that widened each intrapreneur’s relationships across the industry, well beyond their daily circle

RESULT

The inaugural class succeeded. The Center kept running it and refining it year over year to keep pace with the industry, and it grew into a gold-standard program known across the sector.

• Students from three continents and dozens of companies have now been through it
• 100% of participants leave with new skills and tools they can apply in their roles
• 94% say the program created tangible value for their company
• 70% would strongly recommend it to a colleague

CAPABILITY KEPT

The Cable Center kept a program it runs and updates on its own, evolving it year over year as the industry changes, so the pipeline of intrapreneurs never depends on a single outside expert. And the graduates kept something too: a repeatable way to spot an opportunity, test it, and lead change inside a big company, which they carry back to their own organizations long after the ten weeks end. The industry that had lost its entrepreneurial instinct now grows the people who bring it back.