Identifying and pursuing strategic innovations is critical for companies that wish to insure their future growth. Here are a handful of the key principles up on which we base our process, methods and tools:
- Realize potentially disruptive, new-to-the-world products and services
- Pursue business model innovation
- Push the organization beyond its core offerings, markets and channels
- Stretch beyond sustaining innovation and create the innovations that transform
- Gain new capabilities
- Establish new partner relationships and collaborations
- Employ rapid, efficient approaches to development and launch
- Apply new decision-making methodologies
- Discover new methods for forecasting and tracking adoption
Strategic Innovation – New to the World and New to the Company
Strategic innovations, by their nature, demand change. Six key strategic innovation principles underlie our process, methods and tools and help clients succeed:
Embrace Discomfort
Strategic innovation means developing new competencies and embracing ambiguity and uncertainty. The discomfort this causes means you’re doing things right.
Take the Journey, Wait for the Epiphany
Strategic innovation is a learning and thinking process; it’s a journey in pursuit of demand and design insights. The “aha” moments only come after immersing yourself in a thorough and structured exploration of the future.
Focus on Opportunities not Offerings
The objective of strategic innovation is to discover opportunities – not just products and services. An opportunity is a catalyst; it incorporates what is wanted (by the marketplace) and what is possible (technologically) with a viable business model.
Fuel Collective Creativity
Individual creativity is helpful but not sufficient for strategic innovation. Collective creativity arises out of the mingling of diverse perspectives and knowledge from experts and non-experts alike.
Make Strategy the Guide
A robust innovation strategy includes having a view of the future, knowing where to explore, designing the right portfolio and making the necessary cultural and structural commitments.
Probe the Mind-of-the-Ecosystem™
Understanding the true motivations of both internal and external communities — employees, customers, partners, consumers, influencers — is a critical part of strategic innovation. Ecosystem insights lead to improved adoption by the customer and the company.