I am not an entrepreneur.

In the social innovation movement, entrepreneurs get a host of attention, but scarcely do we recognize intrapreneurs. Kevin Nakao at TechFlash writes:

The word intrapreneur was first coined by Pacific Northwesterner Gifford Pinchot III, grandson of the first Chief of the United States Forest Service, who popularized the term in his best-selling book “Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur." According to Pinchot, Intrapreneurs are those people within a corporation who turn an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.

It's one thing to create a successful business model from scratch. But the impact of a start-up is by nature small, whereas the impact that large institutions have is enormous. Perhaps the best opportunity to make large-scale change is to agitate for innovation within these institutions.

For example, Pittsburgh has amazing small business incubators. The impact of IdeaWorks and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) on our region's vitality is astounding and merits praise. We rightly count these agencies among the social innovators in our region. But what about the U.S. Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund? The CDFI Fund supplies much of the capital that smaller community development banks around the country use to support urban and social entrepreneurship. The CDFI Fund should be recognized as a social innovation just as IdeaWorks and PLSG are. Even more impressive, the CDFI Fund supports innovation while operating within the largest and most established institution our country has -- the federal government.

I'm not going to start a business. And I don't have to. And neither do you. And we can all still be social innovators. Imagine that.

My question to you: How can start-ups collaborate with established institutions to amplify their impact?