You cannot have an effective strategy without innovation and you cannot have useful innovation without creating the structure that comes with strategy. You need both!
Video Transcript:
Should your strategy include innovation? Yes, yes, and as many yeses as possible. Because, again, you are not developing or executing strategy without a goal. The goal is to deliver the what, which is defined by the value you create for your customers and your stakeholders. Which is defined in your innovation strategy. So, you have the business strategy and then you have the innovation strategy. Again the what versus the how, and they work together.
The mistake I always see is, the innovation guys want to do their own thing over here. But it doesn’t meet or doesn’t even align with the business strategy. And therefore you have what we call dead projects. These are projects that we dreamt of, we loved them, but nobody is willing to go sell for them, nobody is going to champion them. And then nothing happened.
Or you have strategy saying, “We are going to go to this market, we’re going to go to this market,” and the innovation guys go, “To deliver what?” So, they work together: innovation, strategy, business strategy. And [the] business strategy actually has a section in the strategy that says, this is how and what we are going to deliver and also, that is what helps strengthen the innovation strategy.
For more on how to prepare for, create, and optimize your strategy, order Dr. Baiya, Ron Price, and Professor Timothy Waema’s latest book Optimizing Strategy For Results: A Structured Approach to Make Your Business Come Alive (available March 15, 2022) or visit strategyforresults.com. | Header Photo via Peppershock.
