We've been telling ourselves the same story for decades. "Disruption comes from outside."

From the startup with nothing to lose, the venture-backed challenger rewriting the category, the founder who burned bridges and built a new business model from scratch.

It's a compelling story. It's also, more often than not, wrong.

Scott D. Anthony has spent years studying the history of disruption. In his latest book Epic Disruptions, he made the compelling case that, across centuries and industries, the people who changed things were already inside the very system they were disrupting. They rewrote it while absorbing blows from institutions never designed for change. Two of those people in particular, are worth knowing about.

Florence Nightingale was not supposed to be doing any of this. Nursing was a lower-class profession, and she was from an upper-class family. When she said she wanted to take up nursing, her parents pushed back hard. Nevertheless, Florence trained and started working. Later, when she arrived in Crimea in 1854, she discovered something that gave her chills: soldiers were dying faster in the hospitals meant to save them than on the battlefield itself. Open sewage ran through the wards. No light, no clean air, infectious disease spreading unchecked.

When she arrived with her team of nurses, the chief medical officer refused to let them into the wards. They sat in a corridor for a week, waiting for permission to help soldiers who were dying on the other side of the wall.

The system shut her out, but she didn’t leave. Instead, she made the data from the wards impossible to look away from. Using the telegraph, a disruptive technology in its own right, she called for reform from inside the war. She partnered with statistician William Farr, gathered the numbers, and turned them into something a committee couldn't dismiss: the polar area chart, a visualization so clear that one historian described it as "interocular: it hits you between the eyes."

Florence used the polar area chart to make her case to the War Office, which opened the door to a royal commission. Her data soon became policy. Back in London, she took it further, writing a book on nursing that anyone could read and practice, then opening the first teaching hospital for nurses, sending trained staff across the world. Life expectancy, essentially flat for centuries, began to rise. And in 1875, under her influence, the UK passed a Public Health Act, marking the beginning of a new healthcare policy that would last for generations.

In 1952, a scientist at Corning named Don Stuckey set his kiln to the wrong temperature. Nine hundred degrees instead of six hundred. What came out shouldn't have worked: a glass-ceramic hybrid, structurally improbable, fourteen times stronger than standard glass. Corning knew immediately it had something extraordinary on its hands, but they didn't know what to do with it.

For the next two decades, the company tried to find a market. The material proved to be too strong for most applications, not thin enough for others. The closest they got was a car windshield, and even that fell apart when crash tests showed a human head couldn't survive the impact. In 1971, the project was officially shelved. The material was too far ahead of the world it was built for. But Stuckey kept on working: quietly, without fanfare, inside an organization that had moved on.

When mobile phones began to shrink in the early 2000s, the material found its way into Motorola's Razr, a first hint that the moment was getting closer. And then, Steve Jobs walked into Corning's headquarters in 2007 with a problem: the original iPhone was going to have a plastic screen, and he disliked it. He'd heard about the glass. He wanted it at scale, in six months. Corning's CEO told him it wasn't possible, but Jobs persisted. That material, Gorilla Glass, is now in billions of devices across the world, and it started with a mistake in a lab more than half a century earlier.

Nightingale worked for years inside a system that had normalized the very problem she was trying to solve. Stuckey's material sat on a shelf for half a century before the world caught up. Neither of them left. Both changed things from inside.

That's the part worth sitting with. The people who drove the biggest disruptions weren't outsiders breaking in. They were already in the room. They had the access, the relationships, the front-row seat to what needed changing. As Scott D. Anthony puts it: "We underappreciate the people inside large organizations. They are best positioned to drive disruptive impact."

Nightingale and Stuckey didn't have a playbook. They figured it out through setbacks, patience and sheer persistence.

Today, that playbook exists. Ed Essey spent 12 years coaching intrapreneurs at Microsoft's Garage, turning the path from idea to innovation into something repeatable. What he codified follows next.

There's a scene in almost every heist film where the crew lays out the plan on a table —blueprints, timelines, assigned roles— and someone points out the obvious: getting in is the easy part. It's what happens after that determines whether anyone walks away with anything.

According to Ed Essey, who recently published his book The Inside Job drawing on 12 years coaching intrapreneurs inside Microsoft's Garage, that's not just a cinematic formula— it's the most accurate description of what it takes to drive real innovation inside a large organization. The intrapreneur, in Ed's view, isn't a lone visionary waiting to be discovered. They're a strategist running an inside job.

Most corporate innovation efforts stall not because the ideas are bad, but because the people behind them don't know how to navigate the system around them. They pitch too early, carry too much alone, or mistake a sponsor's enthusiasm for a done deal.

Winning from the inside requires the same discipline as any high-stakes operation: the right preparation before you make your move, the right team in place before pressure hits, and a clear-eyed understanding of who holds the keys — and what it actually takes to get them to open the vault.

This article draws on Essey's framework to walk through two of the most critical phases of that journey: landing the sponsor, and making sure the commitment holds.

From building your conviction and crew, to decoding what a sponsor actually cares about, to protecting your project in the fragile weeks after the yes — it's a playbook for the intrapreneur who doesn't just get the idea approved, but sees it all the way through.

The teams that win consistently are the ones who prepare themselves before making any external move. Four things need to be in place before that move happens: your conviction, your crew, your alignment, and your target.

Before pitching anyone else, it's worth checking whether you're the one blocking your own idea. Intrapreneurs tend to hold themselves back in two ways: following rules that aren't real, and doubting themselves out of the room.

Start off by questioning these rules. Every organization has unwritten assumptions that guide behavior, things like "junior people don't challenge senior leaders" or "innovation only happens in the innovation team." They feel solid, until you actually question them.

Then, there's the doubt. That voice telling you you're not senior enough, not ready enough, that the idea needs one more round of polish. Before listening to it, it helps to ask: is there an actual risk here, or is this just discomfort? If you can name the risk, address it. If you can't, you're probably ready to take the next step.

Projects tend to stall when one person carries all the load. Once you have a rough outline of your idea, recruit before you build anything. Projects with these three roles move faster:

List which roles your project needs and identify the gaps: that becomes your recruiting brief. Framing the mission rather than the role tends to work better. It's worth not committing straight away — a mini-project or advisory role first tests chemistry and commitment before the stakes get high.

Example: One intrapreneur's first project was shelved because he did everything himself. The second time, he found a designer who wowed stakeholders, a marketer who brought clarity to the pitch, and a technical specialist who eliminated early doubts. Leadership didn't just approve the project— they wanted in straight away. Data also confirms the pattern: adding just one cross-functional person increases your chance of winning by 80%.

Once your team is in place, the temptation is to jump straight to building. But without shared clarity on why you're doing this, how you'll work together, and who matters around you, talented people tend to pull in different directions the moment pressure hits. Three 90-minute sessions over three consecutive days can prevent this drift:

Teams that run these sessions tend to reach alignment within weeks.

With your conviction, crew, and alignment in place, the final question is: what exactly are you going after? Not a vague ambition, but a specific project or opportunity you'll take to a sponsor. Getting this wrong is expensive. An idea that's too big gets claimed by a larger team, and an idea that's too small gets ignored by leadership.

The right target tends to pass three lenses:

Then, make it sharp. State your target in one sentence — no fluff, just the idea, why it matters, and why now.

For the next phase, you need the right intel: who is the sponsor, what do they actually care about, and what would make them open the vault?

Pitches die when market insight doesn't meet room reality.

That disconnect, where you own the market but not their world, is where most meetings go quiet. Closing that gap starts with recognizing that sponsorship isn't one role. It's three, often filled by different people:

The instinct is to look for a funder first. But without a receiver, there's nowhere for the project to land. And without an influencer, you may never get the meeting.

For each potential sponsor, go beyond the org chart. Use five lenses: personal details, opportunities and challenges, key relationships, expectations and goals, and relevance to your project.

This is where lean startup thinking, applied inside large organizations, tends to break down. Sponsorship decisions are often based on the metrics the executive cares about, which may look like vanity metrics from the outside. What's actionable for you is whatever moves that specific executive.

For example, one intrapreneur built dossiers on every key stakeholder: not just their roles and goals, but who they are — frustrations, what they let slip when no one's paying attention. She used that relational intelligence to land a pilot that saved eight to nine figures. The sponsor felt understood, and that's what got them to yes.

Can you write one sentence on what your project does for each of the sponsors? If you can't, there’s more groundwork to do.

There's a hierarchy to what sponsors trust:

Winning teams operate at the top, not because they do more work, but because it's more targeted.

It's tempting to build a pitch around excitement. But the sponsor is sitting with a different question: does this make my life easier or harder? If the materials don't answer that, the conversation stalls, no matter how impressive the demo is.

Each phase builds on the last: they must understand before they can care, and care before they act.

If an item isn't essential, doesn't directly influence the sponsor, or can't be deployed quickly, it doesn't belong. Check whether each deliverable is a "detonator" (all-or-nothing) or a "payload" (delivers value even partially complete). Convert detonators into payloads where possible.

List every item you're bringing to the sponsor meeting. For each one, tick the box:

Item 1: _______________________________________________
☐ This works even if it partially fails (Payload)
☐ This only works if everything goes perfectly (Detonator)

Item 2: _______________________________________________
☐ Payload ☐ Detonator

Item 3: _______________________________________________
☐ Payload ☐ Detonator

Item 4: _______________________________________________
☐ Payload ☐ Detonator

Item 5: _______________________________________________
☐ Payload ☐ Detonator

If more than half are Detonators, you're carrying too much risk. For each risk, ask: can I convert this into a Payload? (e.g. record a backup video of the live demo)

A standard preparation includes a deck and talking points. This rarely lands. Instead:

When the sponsor commits, or says no, end the meeting. Overselling past the close rarely ends well.

Example: In one meeting, the sponsor hadn't spoken with eight minutes left. The Operator caught a subtle signal and messaged the Handler, who asked: "What's on your mind?" The conversation opened immediately. The sponsor didn't just support the project; they upgraded the original ask.

Getting the sponsor to say yes is not the end goal. The pattern after the yes is the same, all too often: one follow up, then silence. Nothing happens after that and sponsorship vanishes.

To ensure the sponsor commitment continues, here’s what to do.

Four risks tend to surface the moment the sponsor says yes: your own crew hesitates, someone higher up claims your work, the sponsor's staff feels undermined, or the sponsor simply drifts: they had seven more meetings that day and sixteen more every day since.

The countermove is speed. Send a follow-up the same day — framed around what you will do, not what the sponsor promised. Something like:

Dear [Sponsor],

Thank you for your shared commitment to [vision]. Based on this conversation, we will take the following steps:

1. Meet with [name] to staff the [X] positions per our plan 2. Follow up with your [team] to prepare our go-to-market strategy 3. Work with your [contact name] to improve [specific goal]

Here are the documents we shared: [links]

We will update you monthly and schedule a follow-up meeting in [timeframe].

Short, specific, forward-moving. The sponsor sees you're already acting. They don't need to push, they need to keep up.

Then, establishing a rhythm helps: reaffirming the sponsor's commitment regularly, delivering visible wins, sharing concise forwardable updates, and aligning priorities as conditions shift.

The most dangerous moment isn't the pitch — it's the weeks after the yes. That's when a senior leader claims your project, a reorg reshuffles priorities, or a rival group surfaces with a similar idea.

The ones who come through it prepare before the twist hits. Four things worth keeping ready:

Example: One flagship project had CEO backing and a 50-person incubator built around it. Then a senior leader intervened and insisted on ownership, and the company killed the incubator rather than challenge him. The crew survived because they had their value map ready, showing how marketing, technology, platform, and partnerships all benefited. They carried it through every reorg. The senior leader was eventually pushed out. Years later, the project is thriving and has acquired a competitor.

Between getting the yes and building something that lasts sits the real work. Building, testing, iterating. Discovering that the problem you validated in three conversations looks different at thirty. Earning retention, not just adoption. Finding out whether your growth is organic or entirely dependent on a single sponsor's continued enthusiasm. This phase rarely makes for exciting updates. It's also where most projects either build their foundation or quietly collapse.

The path from first validation to full scale runs through five stages. Each one has to hold before the next one means anything:

Skipping any one of these stages is tempting, especially under sponsor pressure to show results fast. But that’s also how projects collapse.

A launch without retention. Traction without impact metrics. Scale without governance. Each skipped stage leaves a structural weakness that surfaces later, usually at the worst possible moment.

For Ed, that's ultimately what separates the intrapreneurs who succeed once from the ones who succeed repeatedly.

Some lead the new business long-term. Others hand it off and return to start something new. Some build platforms, some build culture, some move on to other companies. There is no single "right" outcome.

What matters is intention. The intrapreneurs who win consistently are not chasing hero moments. They are building relational capital, learning how power works, and designing systems that let good ideas survive inside complex organizations.

The heist, in other words, was never really about the vault. That, more than any single framework, is how innovation theatre becomes an innovation engine

Getting a sponsor to commit is hard. Keeping the momentum alive and turning it into something that actually ships is harder.

Three members of the Community found this out the hard way. Three different companies, three different industries, a similar story.

Harry Laplanche was brought in as the founding member of a new transformation team at a conservative Fortune 500. The use of innovative, shiny tech was seen as a breakthrough: internally, it was treated as a magic wand to solve all of the company's problems. Leadership built an entire team around it, put out transformation mandates, and championed it publicly. Senior leaders had personally committed to this working, in front of their peers and their boards. The sponsorship was as strong as it gets. The team did all the right things: the market analysis, the customer discovery, an acquisition, a new business launch.

But at some point, the cracks showed. With sponsors who had publicly staked their credibility on this transformation, the team's instinct was to confirm their bet, not challenge it.

The hard-won lesson? "When everyone wants your innovation to succeed, that's when your bar has to go up, not down." He now pre-defines what "good enough" looks like before any project starts, and self-imposes stage gates at every phase, because when the sponsor is fully behind you, it falls on you to hold the bar.

Sofia Brazzola built the venture studio at Sennheiser. Her team has executive visibility, delivers venture sprints, and has successfully spun off a startup. And yet, validated concepts with real traction regularly go nowhere.

The sponsorship for exploration exists. What's missing is the commitment to adopt anything that threatens the core.

“As long as the ideas are incremental or adjacent, fine. Whenever they are disruptive and have the potential to cannibalize the core business, then we get into the hard discussions." Sofia now focuses on making one thing visible to leadership: what it costs the company to do nothing.

"Exploration looks expensive until you measure the alternative, which is irrelevance.”

Aleks Petkov-Georgieva has run intrapreneurship at Raiffeisen Bank International for five years. One team had gone further than any other: real problem, real product, paying customers, inside a regulated bank, in months. The business line had been committed from the very beginning. Three months after the launch, the product was stopped. The business line manager had quietly moved the resources back to his core operations. "It's not his job to innovate. It's not in his KPIs. Therefore he doesn't do it. And if he has a choice between a safe business and a new one that carries risk — he'll choose the safe one. So would I."

She now builds the operating side's ownership from the start: ring-fenced resources, exit criteria agreed upfront, and a named person whose KPIs include making sure the product survives the transition.

Three versions of the same gap. The “yes” was real in each case— the stall came later, and for different reasons. Too much sponsor enthusiasm with too little internal scrutiny. Exploration without the mandate to disrupt. Commitment without the structures to outlast a single person's priorities.

The question worth asking before your next sponsor meeting: is the yes you're building toward strong enough to survive what comes after it?

That’s it for today.

Hope you enjoyed this second edition of the Compass. Next time, we’ll dive into killing zombie projects (and fixing the system behind them). I bet there’s some of those also in your portfolio, asking for attention and eating up resources…

Hans Balmaekers
Founder, the Compass and Chief @ Innov8rs

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