From Recovery To Reinvention: Why Sri Lankan Firms Must Unlock The Intrapreneur Within
Jovin Hurry
May 3, 2026
In Colombo today, the mood in business circles is cautiously pragmatic. The worst of the crisis may be behind the Sri Lankans, but the path forward remains narrow, defined by fiscal discipline, external constraints, and the slow work of rebuilding confidence.
Across boardrooms, the focus is understandably on stabilisation: restoring margins, managing currency volatility, rebuilding demand. Yet there is a growing recognition that recovery alone will not be enough.
Sri Lanka does not just need to return to where it was. It must rethink how it grows.
Junko Iwaya and Jovin Hurry reflect on a quiet but powerful set of ideas emerging from Japan that is centred on the rise of the “intrapreneur” to rethink this growth. These are employees who reshape their roles from within organisations, connecting business capabilities with real societal and market needs to create new value.
For Sri Lankan companies navigating structural constraints, this is not a luxury. It may be one of the most practical paths to renewal.
Beyond Efficiency: Making Talent Work Differently
Sri Lanka’s business sector has long demonstrated resilience by operating through volatility, managing costs tightly, and adapting quickly to shocks. However, this resilience has often been built on efficiency under constraint, not necessarily innovation at scale.
Today, a deeper challenge is emerging: how to do more with limited resources, while also moving into higher-value activities.
Junko’s Japanese experience points to a different lever. A concept that inspired her to work towards empowering potential innovators within and outside her company is job crafting, a term coined by researchers Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton in 2001, where employees actively redefine their roles around problems they care about.
John Keells Holdings is Sri Lanka’s largest listed conglomerate on the Colombo Stock Exchange, with over 19,000 employees. It has interests spanning tourism, real estate, retail and logistics. Within such a diversified group, opportunities for innovation are everywhere, but often hidden in silos.
What if mid-level managers in its leisure or transport divisions were empowered to identify inefficiencies in tourist flows, or gaps in regional travel experiences, and build solutions around them? Not as side projects, but as part of their evolving roles.
In a resource-constrained environment, the goal is not adding more headcount or capital. It is about unlocking initiative within existing teams.
Strategy in a Constrained Economy
One of the most useful insights from Junko’s Japanese experience is that meaningful impact arises when three elements connect: individual motivation, organisational capability, and real-world need. In Sri Lanka, this alignment is often fragmented.
MAS Holdings is a global Sri Lankan leader in apparel manufacturing with 53 manufacturing facilities in 17 countries employing over 100,000 people worldwide. The company has already moved up the value chain through design, sustainability, and innovation. However, the next phase, particularly as global buyers demand more resilience and transparency, will require even deeper integration between employee-driven ideas and strategic direction.
For instance, employees working on factory floors or supply chains often have first-hand insight into inefficiencies, waste, or unmet client needs. If these insights are systematically captured and supported, they could lead to new process innovations, sustainability-driven product lines and differentiated offerings in global markets.
In this sense, strategy becomes less about reacting to external pressures and more about harnessing internal intelligence.
The Limits of the Firm in a Small Economy
Sri Lanka’s domestic market is limited. Growth, by necessity, must come from exports, regional integration, and global positioning. Here lies a structural challenge: many firms still operate with internally focused models, even as opportunities lie outside.
Junko’s Japanese intrapreneur approach emphasises co-creation beyond organisational boundaries, collaborating with external partners, often informally at first, to explore new ideas. This has direct relevance for Sri Lankan firms.
Dialog Axiata is one of Sri Lanka’s largest telecommunications service providers, and the country’s largest mobile network operator with over 17 million subscribers. It sits at the intersection of digital infrastructure and consumer services. Its future growth will depend not just on connectivity, but on ecosystems, i.e. fintech, digital services, and enterprise solutions.
What if teams within Dialog were encouraged to initiate partnerships with startups, universities, or regional players, without waiting for top-level directives?
Hayleys PLC is a multinational and diversified conglomerate company in Sri Lanka, publicly listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange with business spanning over 17 sectors, catering to 80 markets worldwide. For conglomerates like Hayleys PLC, with exposure to exports, agriculture, and manufacturing, they could benefit from enabling cross-border collaborations at the team level, in connecting with partners in India, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East.
In a small economy, no single firm can build everything alone. Growth depends on how effectively companies plug into wider networks.
Operating Amid Structural Constraints
Sri Lanka’s business environment is shaped by realities that cannot be ignored: energy costs, foreign exchange pressures, regulatory uncertainty, and the lingering effects of the recent crisis.
These constraints often lead to cautious decision-making, which is a natural response, but one that can limit experimentation.
Yet the Junko’s experience suggests that innovation does not always require large investments. It often begins with small, trust-based initiatives, teams testing ideas, forming collaborations, and iterating quickly.
LOLC Holdings PLC is a Sri Lankan conglomerate listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange. For companies like LOLC Holdings, which has expanded aggressively into regional markets, the ability to experiment in new geographies is critical. Not every initiative will succeed, but the capacity to learn quickly can become a competitive advantage.
The implication is not to abandon discipline, but to complement it with spaces for low-cost experimentation.
From Talent Retention to Talent Activation
One of Sri Lanka’s most pressing challenges is talent retention. Skilled professionals continue to explore opportunities abroad, drawn by stability and higher incomes. However, retention strategies often focus on compensation alone.
The intrapreneur model offers another dimension: meaning and agency.
Employees are more likely to stay when they feel they can shape outcomes, contribute to something larger and grow beyond rigid roles.
For Sri Lankan firms, this means rethinking how talent is engaged. Are employees simply executing tasks? Or are they participating in building the future of the company?
Creating pathways for intrapreneurship with internal ventures, cross-functional projects, exposure to external networks, can make organisations more attractive, even in a challenging environment.
What Leaders Can Do Now
In a context where resources are limited, actions must be practical.
A few starting points for Sri Lankan business leaders:
1. Enable role flexibility
Encourage employees to redefine parts of their work around emerging challenges, whether in operations, customer experience, or new markets.
2. Capture frontline insights
Build simple mechanisms, e.g. regular forums and digital platforms, for employees to share ideas grounded in real operational experience.
3. Support small experiments
Allocate modest budgets or time for teams to test ideas quickly, without heavy approval processes.
4. Encourage external engagement
Allow and incentivise teams to connect with startups, universities, and regional partners.
5. Recognise internal builders
Celebrate employees who initiate and drive change, even if outcomes are uncertain.
These are incremental steps, but in aggregate, they can shift how organisations function.
A Different Kind of Recovery
Sri Lanka’s recovery will not be defined solely by macroeconomic stabilisation. It will depend on how its businesses adapt, innovate, and position themselves in a changing region.
The lesson from Japan is not about copying models. It is about recognising a deeper shift: that the engines of transformation increasingly lie within organisations, not just at the top of them.
For Colombo’s business leaders and reform thinkers, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. In a constrained environment, waiting for perfect conditions is not an option, but neither is relying on old models of growth.
The path forward may lie in something more fundamental, meaning releasing the initiative, creativity, and ambition that already exist inside Sri Lanka’s companies and allowing them to connect with the needs of a rapidly changing world.
It is a quieter form of transformation, albeit with a Japanese scent, but in the years ahead, it may prove to be a most decisive one.
Junko Iwaya, Architect at Nikken Sekkei, Japan
[Junko is an Architect and a Project Manager at the Innovation Design Center in Nikken Sekkei in Japan. Nikken Sekkei is an architectural, planning and engineering firm from Japan, ranking as the sixth largest architectural practice in the world, according to UK Building Design’s annual survey in 2026.]
Jovin Hurry, Sustainability Strategist & Senior Writer
FAQs