Ashoka Changemakers Launch Global Competition for Social Intrapreneurship

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ashoka Changemakers® is launching The League of Intrapreneurs: Building Better Business from the Inside Out, an online competition to find employees within multi-national corporations that are applying entrepreneurial skill sets to create positive social and environmental impact. The competition's convening sponsor is Accenture, the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.

Although the concept of intrapreneurship is not new, it is now being applied to employees that are finding innovative ways to align business objectives with societal needs. This competition is supported by a unique collaboration between the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Standard Chartered, and Imaginals.

The League of Intrapreneurs competition seeks social intrapreneurs who are pioneering new projects that have the capacity to transform business and society. These projects can include innovations in product development, supply chain management, human capital, or business models. Successful examples of social intrapreneurship have included employee-driven models like Vodafone's M-Pesa, a mobile banking service with more than 17 million customers in Kenya.

"Social intrapreneurs are among the most important catalysts for improving the social and environmental impact of large organizations," said Gib Bulloch, executive director of Accenture Development Partnerships. "Fifty-plus of the largest 100 economies in the world are businesses, and just one degree of change instigated from the bottom up by a social intrapreneur can make a huge difference to communities reached by those companies."

Beginning today, participants can submit entries until December 5, 2012 at changemakers.com/intrapreneurs. The top 15 entrants from the competition will form the inaugural class of the League of Intrapreneurs, becoming part of an elite global network of changemakers.

An expert panel of judges will select three winning entries from the League, and the community will vote to determine one additional winning entry. Winners will be announced in April 2013.

About Ashoka Changemakers

Ashoka Changemakers is a community of action that connects social entrepreneurs around the globe to share ideas, inspire, and mentor each other.  Through its online collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers.com is one of the world's most robust spaces for launching, discussing, and funding ideas to solve the world's most pressing social problems. Changemakers builds on Ashoka's three-decade history and belief that we all have the ability to be a Changemaker.

Contact Information:
Lauren Parnell Marino
[email protected]
703-527-8300

www.changemakers.com

SOURCE Ashoka Changemakers