About a month back, SustainAbility UK released a report on Social Intrapreneurs that documents how changemakers are leveraging their positions inside major corporations to effect widespread social impact.  The following diagram from page 12 of the report sums it up for me:

Social Entrepreneurship models have been positioned as better ways to sustain long-term social impact as compared to the operating models of “traditional NGOs” or charities (caveat: not all social issues have been successfully tackled by social entrepreneurs).  Traditional CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is seen to possess greater business value to the corporation - many skeptics see it as over-zealous self-promotion by the corporation without significant social impact - and the advent of Social Intrapreneurship is one possible avenue for corporations to realize business value while furthering itself on the social impact dimension.

A very powerful combination would be for partnerships to be forged between social intrapreneurs and social entrepreneurs, hence answering the capitalistic question of “what’s in it for the corporation?” while driving towards long-term sustainable impact.  The SustainAbility report itself contains several examples of social intrapreneurship.  It does not however provide examples of intrapreneur-entrepreneur partnerships, but that is one area that we’re actively looking to address within the Volans Connects program of Volans Ventures.