The center of greatness
Strategy and Innovation
Developing an effective innovation strategy is a major challenge for modern businesses. It requires a coherent approach that aligns innovation objectives with the overall strategy and enables meeting customer needs while adapting to market realities.
Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy
Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain innovation capability? The reason is not simply a failure to execute, but a failure to articulate an innovation strategy that aligns innovation efforts with the company’s overall strategy.
Without such a strategy, companies will struggle to assess the trade-offs between different practices, such as crowdsourcing and customer co-creation, and risk ending up with a patchwork of approaches. They will struggle to design a coherent innovation system that meets their competitive needs over time, and may be tempted to copy someone else’s system. They will also struggle to align different parts of the organization around common priorities.
As Corning, a leader in glass and materials science, has found, an innovation strategy must determine how innovation will create value for potential customers, how the company will capture a share of that value, and what types of innovations to pursue. Critics tend to dismiss “routine” innovation that leverages a company’s existing technical capabilities and business model in favor of “disruptive” innovation, but this is a simplistic view. A company’s unique competitive circumstances should dictate the portfolio of innovations it pursues.
Since innovation is transversal, only leaders can define an innovation strategy. In doing so, they must recognize that the strategy, like the innovation process itself, requires continuous experimentation and adaptation.
The Leadership Challenge
Building innovation capacity starts with strategy
- The question then arises: who is responsible for defining this strategy?
- The answer is simple: the most senior leaders in the organization. Innovation touches almost every function. Only the most senior leaders can orchestrate such a complex system. They must take primary responsibility for the processes, structures, talent, and behaviors that shape how an organization seeks innovation opportunities, synthesizes ideas into concepts and product designs, and chooses what to do.
Creating and implementing an innovation strategy involves four essential tasks
- Answer the question “How will innovation create value for customers and for our business?” and then explain it to the organization.
- Create a high-level plan for allocating resources to different types of innovation. Ultimately, how you spend your money, time, and effort is your strategy, no matter what you say.
- Managing trade-offs. Since each function naturally wants to serve its own interests, only the most senior leaders can make the choices that are most beneficial to the entire company.
- Recognize that innovation strategies must evolve. Every strategy represents a hypothesis that is tested against the changing realities of markets, technologies, regulations, and competitors. Just as product design must evolve to remain competitive, innovation strategies must evolve as well. Like the innovation process itself, an innovation strategy involves continuous experimentation, learning, and adaptation.
What will you learn?
- Understand what a disruption is and how to respond effectively when it happens to you
- Establish effective strategies to integrate innovative processes into your organization
- Learn how to combine new innovations with your company's evolving strategic vision
- Discover strategies for cultivating a culture of innovation and managing resistance to innovation within the organization
- Foster new ways to strengthen your organization’s ability to cope with today’s uncertainty
- Understand and engage your teams to build productive working relationships
- The Future of Recruiting and Retaining the Right People in a Post-Pandemic World
- The macro trends that will impact the success of your talent strategy.
WHO IS IT FOR?
- Senior executives, company presidents, decision makers interested in restricting their teams
- Business owners, directors and managers looking to adapt to the needs of their business after the pandemic
- Entrepreneurs and business owners looking to identify the right talent
- Recruiting and HR teams looking for new and effective talent strategies.
ABOUT
Peter M. Nathan
Peter M. Nathan, PhD, is an Emirati Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, where he led the Transforming Companies HR Strategy Programme – considered the world’s leading HR programme. Over the past 20 years, Gratton has helped companies around the world prepare for the future of work, while also writing extensively on the interface between people and organisations. His eight books include The Shift, The 100-Year Life and, most recently, The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World.
Since 2005, Gratton has led the Future of Work Research Consortium, the oldest and most advanced research group anticipating how work will change and how organizations need to do things differently to thrive in the years ahead. She is a fellow of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and has chaired the WEF Leadership Council. In 2017, Gratton became an advisor to GoogleOrg’s initiative to help people prepare for the changing nature of work.
AGENDA
- Strategy in the Age of Disruption
- Innovation for growth
- Creating a culture of innovation
- Capacity for uncertainty
THE FUTURE OF TALENTS
- Trends shaping talent
- What it takes to win – the new skills agenda
- The changing career paths: from a three-stage career to a multi-stage career
- Preparing to meet the changing expectations of tomorrow’s talent
CULTIVATING A PRODUCTIVE WORKPLACE
- What People Want – Balance of Tangibles and Intangibles
- Understanding the Employee Lifecycle
- Considering Build/Buy/Borrow Options
- The Importance of Building the Entire Talent System
A FRAMEWORK TO THRIVING IN A CHANGING WORLD
- Rethinking Work: How to Make Work Hybrid
- Productive Work – The Importance of Managing Boundaries
- The Crucial Role of Managers in Talent Strategy
- Six Critical Actions to Take Now
Meeting the eligibility criteria:
- You will then receive an invitation to submit a short video presentation of yourself and your business/business idea.
- You will receive an email notification of a decision.