Successful Black Entrepreneurs

9Black Intrapreneurs

“The Virgin Group could never have grown into the more than 200 companies it is now were it not for a steady stream of intrapreneurs who looked for and developed opportunities often leading efforts that went against the grain.”¹

— Richard Branson, founder of The Virgin Group

AS NOTED IN my book Entrepreneurial Finance: Finance and Business Strategies for the Serious Entrepreneur, Fourth Edition, an intrapreneur is a person who succeeds by engaging in entrepreneurship in a corporate environment. The intrapreneur creates new products or services that are distinctively different from or the same as the company’s core business, or the intrapreneur can target a completely new customer base with existing or new products or services. The intrapreneur who is not a member of the company’s research and development or new product teams has the primary objective of increasing the corporation’s revenues and profits.

One of the best examples of a successful intrapreneur is the brilliant Black business executive Linda Gooden. As a powerful force inside and outside of the company, she worked at Lockheed Martin for more than two decades.²

In the late 1980s, Lockheed’s main source of revenue was from its contracting work with the U.S. Department of Defense. The company’s projects were focused on delivering large and complex technology solutions to meet the DoD’s needs. At the time, the company had only two standalone information technology (IT) contracts outside of the ...