Linda Renfro is no Steven Jobs. Nor is she Bill Gates. Still, the trio are kindred spirits in their approach to stepping away from the tried and true and attempting to create something larger. And just as the computer wizards stepped away from convention to create what are now multi-billion-dollar companies, so Renfro - and others like her - are taking roads less traveled to create new industries. The difference? The Renfros of the world have found a way of creating new enterprises within the structures of their existing companies.

"Essentially, about five years ago we had a concept that I was exploring - changes in the way government was buying services. The government can't add people, so the options are IT systems - how to do more with less," explains Renfro, president of Lockheed Martin Technology Services Information Support Services Company, where she is responsible for overseeing software development and maintenance for civilian government agencies.

The company she created exists within the Lockheed Martin family, and in four short years has more than returned the initial investment the parent company placed in it. In the first year, Lockheed Martin reported more than $23 million in sales in Renfro's newly created "company." Four years later, sales topped $240 million.

Normally, companies, particularly large ones, would purchase large systems that may have provided for the company's short-run needs, but may not work in the long run.

Renfro's approach was complex in its simplicity. She took her lead from one of her company's biggest clients, the U.S. government, which began buying new technology in pieces rather than diving into full packages. Renfro submitted a proposal to sell what she called "incremental" software at a time when it "was not really thought of." Her higher-ups thought the idea was at least worth a look, and Renfro could rest easy in the knowledge that if the plan did not prove out, the financial risk to a company the size of Lockheed Martin would be relatively small - much smaller than the risk would be to a smaller company or an entrepreneur looking to strike out alone.

"Our company had a robust business in software ordering and integration. I saw a niche that was growing in the federal government," Renfro explains. "Software is more of an art than a science, and many times the companies ended up being disappointed" with the product that had cost them a great deal of money. "We now have software that allows us to track information in remote locations."

Because they closely resemble entrepreneurs, people who turn ideas into realities outside an organization, those who do it on the inside have been dubbed "intrapreneurs" - hands-on "doers."

"What we went through in the 1970s in college was that we learned that there was more than one way to do everything," says Renfro, who earned a computer technology degree from Youngstown State University and a graduate degree from San Diego State University during that period. "In your formative years, if you are inquisitive, you probably will be inquisitive when you are older."

For many large firms, Renfro embodies a growing corporate trend - one that may well keep these companies competitive into the next century: Rather than watch their talented, creative employees leave for careers as consultants and competitors, foster an environment where those employees can develop ideas in-house.

"To get ahead, both individuals and organizations need to anticipate and direct change, and learn from it. This requires that the people doing the work take responsibility for improving it, using all the information and experience they can muster," Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot wrote in a Delta Airlines Sky Magazine article in 1994. The Pinchots, who run a Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based intrapreneur-support organization, continued, "Many organizations, big and small, are still able to generate enough new products and services to create new jobs - at least as fast as the old ones are destroyed through automation and obsolescence."

"As the population grows and industrialization spreads to more nations, the effective management of ecological issues becomes critical to the success of businesses as well as to the survival of ecosystems and people," says Gifford Pinchot, an innovation management consultant and founder of Pinchot & Company. He has written two books on the subject: "Intrapreneuring: Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur," and "The Intelligent Organization," which he co-wrote with his wife, Elizabeth.

Pinchot adds, "The organizations of the future will be structured from many smaller interacting enterprises, more like the market structure of a free nation than that of a totalitarian system. The new organization will be pluralistic to the core."

"It reduces your downside risk," Renfro explains. "The reason my management was willing to take the risk is that, to them, what's a million dollars to spend that has the potential for a big return?"

Renfro agrees that the need for companies to compete more effectively has made intrapreneuring a viable avenue - particularly in the information business.

"What's really changed in the IT environment is that because the technology is changing so quickly, the controlling factor is how fast you can change," says Renfro, who counts such government agencies as the Department of Energy in Hanford, Wash., the departments of Commerce, Transportation, Education, and Defense in Washington, D.C., the Baltimore-based Social Security Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency in Raleigh, N.C., among the clients served by Lockheed Martin. "You are now building a more flexible structure, and you depend more on having a good process."

But what does it take to strike out into new arenas, to be an intrapreneur?

"You have to be a maverick. You need a few of those people around," Renfro deadpanned. "I thrive on change. I think that if you are in the information technology business and you are averse to change, you are not going to last."

She adds, "I love what I do. Every day I encounter a whole new set of things. Someone introduces me to a new technology I have never seen before. And because our support services are so varied, it's awesome that we can do such a variety of things."

Renfro, who joined Lockheed Martin in 1980 as a software engineer, sees a potential for women and people of color to use intrapreneurships to crack through some of the traditional barriers of race and gender facing them in the corporate world.

"As we move into a global economy and compete on a worldwide basis, every talented individual will be needed to maintain our competitive edge," argues Renfro, who was recognized as an Outstanding Technology Leader at the 1996 Women of Color Technology Awards Luncheon and Symposia, sponsored by US Black/Hispanic Engineer and Information Technology magazines.

Eventually, Renfro may opt for other pastures, which may include a turn in the classroom.

"What I want to do is teach," she says. "As fascinated as I am with technology, I am more fascinated with people and what they can do."