The Inside Innovator, with Louis Gump – Episode 453 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Digital media executive Louis Gump, with time spent at CNN, the Weather Channel, Cox Media, and more, talks about breaking early ground in the mobile space, the 5 main characteristics of an intrapreneur, not putting efficiency over optimization, the symbiotic relationship between intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs, the genesis of innovation, and more.

About Louis:

Louis K. Gump is a business builder, transformational leader, and pragmatic optimist. He has worked with some of the most recognized companies in the world, developing talented teams and achieving remarkable success for growth businesses. He has done this from multiple perspectives: as an intrapreneur within large corporations, as CEO and entrepreneur within smaller companies, and in strategic industry leadership roles.

Gump is president of Cambian Solutions, which focuses on excellence in innovation, business growth, and team performance. Earlier in his career, he presided over award-winning mobile businesses at The Weather Channel and CNN. More recently, he has served as CEO of two digital media firms and led Cox Media, the advertising division of Cox Communications, the third largest cable provider in the US. Gump has also held leadership roles in a wide range of industry and community organizations, including ten years on the board of the Mobile Marketing Association, where he served as global chairman, as well as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Online Publishers Association (OPA).

Louis has also served as CEO of NewsON, a digital media company that allows viewers to instantly watch live and on-demand local TV news from most major cities across the US through streaming devices and mobile apps. He also served as CEO of mobile product and advertising company LSN Mobile.

Gump is author of the forthcoming book The Inside Innovator: A Practical Guide to Intrapreneurship. He earned an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and a BA from Duke University.

Learn more at LouisGump.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Stephanie Maas
Hi, it’s super nice to meet you.

Louis Gump
Likewise, Stephanie. It’s nice to meet you.

Stephanie Maas
So where are you calling in from?

Louis Gump
I am based in Atlanta, and I’m at my home office right now, which got started during COVID. And it seems to have been a second kind of work home since then, very shortly after I started working at home or our son was taking trumpet lessons. And I got on a work call. And all of a sudden, I was upstairs at the time. And all of a sudden, this really loud, middle school level trumpet playing started. And we had to change that pretty fast. But that was a wake up call.

Stephanie Maas
Oh, my gosh, I love it. I love it. Well, I’m super excited to talk with you. I will say, while I’m excited, I am not going to hold it against you, that you went to Duke. I’m a Tar Heel. Just want to caution that listeners that you know you had a subpar education. So there’s gonna be some limits here.

Louis Gump
Well, I do understand that. But on the other hand, my wife and my dad and my mom and my brother and my daughter now have been UNC students. And so we have a lot of representation around here.

Stephanie Maas
Okay. So the first thing I want to jump in right away, is a really want you to talk to us about this idea of intrapreneurship versus entrepreneurialship. I think most people are pretty familiar with the latter. But this intrapreneurship might be a little bit new. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Louis Gump
This is a really important distinction. And I think it’s sometimes under appreciated. You know, entrepreneurship is critically important, and the value generation and the genesis of new ideas. There’s so much there with entrepreneurship. And also in large companies, we find that there’s a lot of value creation and new ideas. And we have focused so much in our society on entrepreneurship that sometimes the value from within larger organizations kind of lives in the shadows, it isn’t that it’s unknown, we see it all the time, we, you know, when we’re ordering online, and when we’re driving a car, you name it. There’s all sorts of ways that intrapreneurship affects us in our everyday lives. However, what I’m finding, and what I’ve experienced is that intrapreneurship is not simply derivative of entrepreneurship, rather, they’re cousins. And there are some distinct skill sets that are required in intrapreneurship. To succeed. Some of these are common with entrepreneurs, and some of them are a little bit different. One of the distinguishing factors, for example, is the size and complexity of the organizations and the related skills that are required to navigate through. For example, if you’re an entrepreneur, and in general, I think of that as someone who owns a company or has started a company, or both, they tend to have a lot of control over what they do and how they do it. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re are by definition inside a larger organization. And the entrepreneur is someone who creates value through innovation and growth within a larger organization. And so you have other structures, you might have a larger brand, or you certainly have a lot more people any one of whom can affect your ability to move forward. So there are quite a few differences. But both are very important.

Stephanie Maas
So taking that just a little bit, are there can you give me some real life examples of what intrapreneurship looks like? Just to help further understand this?

Louis Gump
One of the examples that comes to mind immediately, is what our team experienced at the Weather Channel, starting in 2001. And what happened was that the Weather Channel TV network, of course, was very well known as one of the most trusted brands in our country. And then the desktop web was taking off. And so weather.com was very popular. And then some of us who were working on weather.com, including myself, we also knew that wireless had some possibility, but we didn’t know where it was going to go and we said, hey, we think wireless is going to be big someday. This was before we even called it mobile. And then we start Did building a first generation of apps with technologies like Java and brew and windows and Symbian, and that kind of worked, and we had a business model, and we started generating some new revenue. And then we built some video products. And we were kind of pretty active with that for a while, and then mobile web came back around. And when the browsing experience came, then we really built the user base, the size of that, and then we figured out how to monetize it. And so over a period of years, and with the assistance of a lot of people, some of whom were dedicated, and some of whom are elsewhere in the organization. And in the industry, we created something that ultimately was a primary value driver of the business, if you get something more current, let’s say, I don’t know, a prototypical example might be Amazon, you know, started out selling books, and then they started out selling a lot of things. If you look at where they generate a lot of their value these days, look at AWS, Amazon Web Services. And so companies that do this, well just have the ability to serve customers in new ways. And obviously give team members opportunities in the process.

Stephanie Maas
So again, just drilling down a little bit further. So who is the intrapreneurial? In those scenarios? Is it you, because you are leading these teams? Is it the boots on the ground coder, walk me through that one level deeper.

Louis Gump
In general, it’s a person who has a leadership role, a lot of different people, and a lot of different roles can be intrapreneurs. And so that the thing I want to emphasize here is that you could be by role the owner of a business unit, you could kind of as the way things unfold, you could be responsible for an initiative, officially, or you can just be doing it because that’s who you are. And that’s what the opportunity is. So there are a lot of different ways to do it. And another thing I want to mention here is that as I did my research, I started thinking this was primarily in the corporate environment. And then I realized, while speaking with some folks who are really talented builders, in the nonprofit sector, that they identified with this, too, they said, Hey, we’ve been building out new ways to serve, you know, the people that we’re focused on. And then I heard about this in education. And you can go on from there. And so there’s a pretty broad playing field here. But the key is creating value through innovation and growth. And if that’s what you’re doing, you might be officially designated a leader, you might create it, but over time, it becomes pretty clear.

Stephanie Maas
Super cool. So walk us through one of the things you said earlier was this skill set between an entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial tend to be different?

Louis Gump
Sure, so what I’d like to do is to start with the top five characteristics of Intrapreneurs, some of which are shared, and some of which are a little bit different, at least in degree. The first one that I found it came up over and over again, in fact, maybe in every single interview I did is curiosity, an intrapreneur needs to be willing to explore needs to be willing to go to places that people haven’t gone to before. In general, this comes from within, yeah, maybe you can train it, but a lot of the times is just how you’re wired. The second one is action oriented. And this one is critically important. Because it’s one thing to be curious, but also to you know, enjoy tinkering and playing around with things and just for the discovery, nothing wrong with that. But if somebody is going to be an intrapreneur, they need to be able to make things happen, they need to be able to build, they need to be able to engage other people. Which brings me to the third characteristic. And this one is especially important for intrapreneurs, the ability to build bridges. If you’re an entrepreneur, it helps if you can build bridges, it’s a great idea. But it’s possible to have an idea and some funding and to build it in a relatively small space, and then introduce it to the world. And if your product or service is good enough, you can really go to town with that. But if you’re an intrapreneur, it doesn’t work that way. In general, what you’re going to see is that you have dozens, maybe even hundreds of people that you rely on or could rely on within the organization, and any one of them could stop you. Therefore, you’re going to have to be able to build bridges, not only in quantity, but also with different types of people of people who are functionally in different places people have, you know, introverts extroverts, work closer work farther, you name it. And so someone who can do that really well, sometimes inside the company and outside the company, when you can do that, that makes a big difference for a successful intrapreneur. Next, someone who’s risk tolerant, but this one is interesting. Also, a lot of entrepreneurs are highly risk tolerant. They’re like, Hey, I’m gonna go do it. I can do this on my own. If it works, and I hope it does. That’s great. And if not, you know, I can live with that. But someone who’s an intrapreneur has to be risk tolerant. But on the other hand, they often like having the resources, the air cover of a larger organization, that is something that’s really valuable. So you can kind of hit just the right spot. And what I find also is that some people at different stages of their careers are interested in doing one versus the other. So risk tolerance is not static, it can change over time. And lastly, someone who’s optimistic in terms of the top five, someone who can and navigate through the ups and downs that are inevitable and say, I think we can do this, I have a vision, let’s bring people together. But it’s not blind optimism. It’s grounded optimism is someone who’s realistic, they understand what’s possible. So if you have those five characteristics, and then you understand that you’re in a larger organization, as opposed to having a lot more control that when you can find some of the most successful intrapreneurs.

Stephanie Maas
So you’re chugging along in your career, how do you know? Am I best suited to be an intrapreneur? Am I better suited to be an entrepreneur? I mean, how do you know?

Louis Gump
Some of this is self knowledge. But some of it is discovery the way you described it over time, I didn’t set out to be an intrapreneur. And at the same time, I didn’t, I didn’t use wording like that, I just said, Hey, I’d like to go help people build businesses. And I love to work with talented teams. Turns out, those are two pretty good signs that you might be fulfilled as an intrapreneur. Another one is the environment you find yourself in, because you have to match someone who is naturally wired to be an intrapreneur. With the right timing, but you also have to find the right environment, there is very little that’s more frustrating to an intrapreneur than someone who has a great idea. You can see it, you can feel it, you can taste it. And then you’re in an organization which says now sorry, we’re busy, we have other priorities, no, we’re not going to do that. Or you need to do that somewhere else, or something along those lines. Opportunities can grow out of that, but it doesn’t really allow an intrapreneur to flourish. So what I find is that when you have the self knowledge, and then you find the right organization, that helps a lot. And then here’s one more that’s critically important, a great boss, you know, when you have someone who can be your advocate, who can be your mentor, call up the department over there that might be not quite available. They’re nice people, but they’re just busy, and say, Hey, could you please help my team member, as they’re exploring this opportunity to go into a new market, I would really appreciate it and it would be good for the company. When that happens. Intrapreneurs essentially get the green light to move ahead and they get the support they need. One of the really great things about being an intrapreneur is you’ve have access to resources. And this is different from many entrepreneurs, because you can go to the marketing department, you can go to strategic planning, you can go to the research department, you can go to HR, you can go to accounting, you name it, and they can give you support. And so the person who is able to essentially bring together people in what I think of as a round table to make something happen, you’re on the path to potential greatness.

Stephanie Maas
Walk me through the genesis of the book, your vision, and just a couple of highlights on the end product.

Louis Gump
Sure. So I’ll start with the goals, I have three goals with this book to help people achieve more, build stronger relationships, and increase personal fulfillment through intrapreneurship. And so everything that I’ve done with this book is related to that simple sentence. And the Genesis book was about five years ago, I had been very fortunate to work with some amazing companies like the Weather Channel and CNN, we had a small company called news on that grew in a year from a company without even a name to being one of the top five providers of news and information on Roku. And we did that with the partnership of a number of local broadcasting companies. So as I did that, it became clear to me, Hey, where’s the resource for people who do this? Because I’m here to tell you, Stephanie, our teams have had a lot of success. But we’ve messed up plenty of things too. And some of the things that we didn’t get right, were easily avoidable. They were predictable. I was like, where’s the concise guide for that, but I didn’t find a book on this topic. So it looked like there was a gap. And so for about five years, I was thinking about it. And I the interest kept growing. In August of 2022. I left a Cox media amazing company, in part of cox communications. And a couple of months in, I thought, hey, maybe now is the time to write that book, when is a better time to write the book? And my answer was never. And I wanted it to be a practical guide, not theoretical, and also not something that was really narrative about my story. The important point is that there are certain things that intrapreneurs can do to increase their ability to be successful and happy. And so the first three chapters are about essentially building the foundation and understanding if you’re the right person personality type to do this, and if so, how you find an opportunity in the right environment, and then the second half is making it happen.

Stephanie Maas
That is so exciting. Give us a teaser, what are a couple things that oh gosh, in hindsight, that was totally avoidable, etc, etc.

Louis Gump
Sure. So a lot of them are with people. When someone is driving change and all intrapreneurs are driving change. That’s just part of it as part of innovation. It’s easy to To be in a situation where you have some challenges with other people, someone owns a certain department or area or someone thinks that something works one way, which is fine for what they’ve been doing in the past, but it might not work as well for the future and that sort of thing. And it’s easy to get impatient, you know, intrapreneurs sometimes are a little impatient, they want to get going, they want to make it happen. But what can happen there, and I’ve done this far too many times is, in my eagerness to get going, I failed to listen well enough to the knowledge of someone else. And then maybe, you know, in the spirit of candor, I was a little too direct, as opposed to just trying to understand more. And so I think active listening skills are critically important, I talk about this some in the book, you’re not a basketball coach, you’re in a meeting room, I say that literally in the book, because I’ve tried several times, to draw from some of my favorite, you know, basketball coaches, some of whom are really amazing leaders. And, you know, if you go in there, and you say, hey, I need you to do this, not that, and you step back on the listening, that might work on the basketball court, but it doesn’t work. So in the meeting room, if you forget that, and I have from time to time, you’ll get a reminder really fast. On the other hand, if you do take the time to listen and make sure that the respect that is intended is received, then a whole lot of really great things happen. Here’s another one, I’m going to use digital media for this example, because I’ve experienced it but but there are lots of other examples in other industries, where you have a technology that works for one generation of services, but it doesn’t work for the next. And companies often try to be really efficient, instead of optimizing for the next thing that’s coming. And it is possible, for example, to take a platform in a big company and say, Hey, we’ve already paid for the platform, we don’t want to pay more, we don’t want to train up new people. So let’s just try to use that for this new and innovative thing. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it’s brilliant, but sometimes it doesn’t. And so it’s very important to understand what the goals are. And then to assess an existing technology for future purpose, not an existing technology for efficiency.

Stephanie Maas
I want to shift gears ever so slightly if I could, and talk a little bit about this idea of intrapreneurial roles, training the next generation of leaders. So I’d really love to hear you talk a little bit about the thoughts around these intrapreneurial is really training up that next generation leader.

Louis Gump
Sure. So some of the findings in the book, for me were pretty predictable, like intrapreneurs, create value inside organizations. I’ve known it, I’ve seen it. But on the other hand, one of the ones that I didn’t see coming quite as clearly until talking with a bunch of folks, is this importance of intrapreneurship to the next generation of leaders. As I was doing some research for this podcast, I saw that Southwestern also focuses on training up the next generation of leaders, I was really interested in that. And I hope sometime to ask a bunch of questions about how y’all do it too. But in this context, I heard story after story about how a really talented person who already is wired naturally, to be a successful intrapreneur is given an opportunity, they’re typically given an opportunity for one of two reasons. Either the situation they’re in brings about a need, they see it, and with others, they move forward. And they address that need in the process, some really cool things happen. The second one is when a senior leader or a more senior leader within the organization says you know, this person has a lot of promise, we need to give them a good opportunity to expand their skill set. Either one can work, there is a woman here in Atlanta, and she’s mentioned in the book, she was a legal team member at Turner Broadcasting. And Turner bought a company and they needed some people to help shepherd it through and turn it into something that worked inside the company, essentially to integrate it. And she was put on the integration team. And she learned so much there that she told me I added value from a legal perspective and with her legal expertise. But what really happened is that she became a general manager through that process. And by becoming a general manager, she became much better as a legal leader and a much more valuable asset to the company and ultimately was one of the most senior leaders of that company. And she’s now chief legal officer of a company that I you know, the valuation has a whole bunch of zeros on it. I found examples like that over and over and over again.

Stephanie Maas
That is so exciting to hear. Part of what I’m hearing you communicate is the last five to eight years. What I feel like I’ve witnessed is to your point, folks are really embracing that. Hey, my role now is to Look for those that are wired a certain way and make sure that they have the opportunities, or as a leader step into a mentor type of relationship, what have been your observations around that?

Louis Gump
I think that awareness has increased broadly about the importance of training up the next generation of leaders, I was fortunate enough kind of from early on, to work with people who helped many others, including me to grow. And so the environments that I was in, sometimes had people who were what I would consider to be very enlightened and supportive from the beginning. But in other places, you know, it was all about just getting the job done. Like we don’t have the time, we don’t have the budget, we have a job to do, let’s go get that next sale, let’s go ship that next ocean container, let’s produce that next story, whatever it is. And you know, there’s a balance, the operational aspect of things I think we all would agree is important. But I think you’re onto something there with this increased awareness, and sometimes increased tools, and increased availability of coaches and whatnot, I’m seeing much more consistent availability of leadership training, and really big opportunities for people to grow. From my perspective, if a leader is focused on protecting their own their own job, like it’s understandable that we all have interest, but at the end of the day, from my perspective, the primary focus of a leader should be on contribution, not on self. If you focus on contribution, then a lot of other good things tend to happen, especially if you’re an environment that’s conducive to that. And so I’m finding leaders who have said, Hey, I’m allocating a certain amount of time to mentoring people. I’m finding leaders who are saying, well, yeah, we have a limited budget, but I want to let you go to this conference, because it would be a really helpful thing for you, and on and on and on.

Stephanie Maas
And do you see that shift for those who are willing to make it or embrace it, contribute to what you what else you talked about in the personal fulfillment?

Louis Gump
100%, people often have some awareness of their talents and their strengths. And I think a great boss, a great manager will try to be aware of other people’s strengths, and then feed those. I also think for each of us as individuals, if we have self awareness, and we can help show how we can contribute, that kind of invites people to find ways to support so I think it’s a two way street. It’s not just kind of leadership somewhere else, it’s also us. And if we have that knowledge, and if we feed it, goodness knows there are a lot of different ways to grow. And oh, by the way, some of them do require dollars. Some of them require a trip or a training program or an experience, but some of them are pretty simple learning and conversation.

Stephanie Maas
So I have a little bit of a serious question. Obviously, you’ve had a tremendously successful career to date. And now this book coming out, which I think it’s going to be just incredible for folks, do you ever wonder how much better or how much more you could achieved if you had gone to Carolina? This has been super, super interesting. Anything else? We haven’t talked about that you want to make? Sure we do before I let you go?

Louis Gump
So there were four takeaways that I had from the book for your listeners. If they don’t take anything else away, and they’re interested in the topic, then the first thing that I found consistently, is that intrapreneurs push established organizations to adapt. There’s a great story from an entrepreneur and intrapreneur named Quint Studer who says, Look, sometimes intrapreneurs are viewed as disruptors, or you know, their questions, hey, do they understand what our company is about? But actually, the question ought to be, how can we harness the value and perspective of these team members, because often, they’re seeing things that provide a lot of value for the future. So in an organization that’s really healthy, and understands how to adapt, then they’re going to welcome the contributions of Intrapreneurs. Next, and we already talked about it. So I’ll mentioned it briefly here. Intrapreneurs train the next generation of leaders just over and over and over again, I saw that it’s not the only place for training the next generation, but as disproportionately large next intrapreneurs create transformative growth opportunities for entrepreneurs. And we haven’t really talked about this one here today. There’s a whole lot to say about it. But a short story is that I found in my own experience, and through writing this book, it became clear to me great intrapreneurs usually don’t have all the capabilities they need inside their company. And so they look outside and often entrepreneurs are solving similar problems. And when that happens, intrapreneurs can provide breakthrough opportunities for entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs can provide the capabilities and the people power that intrapreneurs would take years to develop. So it’s symbiotic. And the last thing that I would mention is that intrapreneurs drive a large portion of the value creation within organization. Again, not the only source, but a lot of it, especially the new value creation. And, you know, there’s a simple statement that I use to summarize this intrapreneurs activate innovation.

Stephanie Maas
It’s a powerful statement.

Louis Gump
Thank you.

Stephanie Maas
Fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. Just really appreciate you carving out some time to be with us today.

Louis Gump
Oh, it’s completely my pleasure. Thanks for taking the time, Stephanie. I’ve loved being here.