Strategic Alignment

Strategic alignment is the process of linking innovation strategy with corporate vision, goals, objectives, and strategy.

Why Strategic Alignment?

The cost and time required to create a new product or service are so large that lack of a perfectly aligned and executed innovation strategy can be extremely wasteful. You can pursue any opportunity you want, but you cannot afford to pursue every opportunity you want. Strategic alignment "creates a directional beacon that defines which domains to explore and which ones to avoid."

The Strategic Innovation framework weaves together seven dimensions to produce a range of outcomes that drive growth:-

1) A managed innovation process-combining non-traditional and traditional approaches to business strategies.

2) Strategic alignment-building support.

3) Industry foresight-understanding emerging trends.

4) Consumer/customer insight-understanding articulated and unarticulated needs.

5) Core technologies and competencies-leveraging and extending corporate assets.

6) Organizational readiness-the ability to take action.

7) Disciplined implementation-managing the path from inspiration to business impact.

Managed Innovation Process lies at the core of the approach. By facilitating the interplay between external perspectives and an organization's internal capabilities/practices – and by looking beyond the obvious – it is possible to inspire the corporate imagination to explore a diverse array of new possibilities.

The process is designed and managed to create Strategic Alignment – the enthusiastic internal support among key stakeholders required to galvanize an organization around shared visions, goals and actions.

Industry Foresight provides a "top-down" perspective that seeks to understand the complex forces driving change, including emerging and converging trends, new technologies, competitive dynamics, potential dislocations and alternative scenarios.

Consumer/Customer Insight provides a "bottom-up" perspective, a deep understanding of both articulated (explicitly stated) and unarticulated (latent or unrecognized) needs of existing and potential consumers/customers.

Core Technologies and Competencies is the set of internal capabilities, organizational competencies and assets that could potentially be leveraged to deliver value to customers, including technologies, intellectual property, brand equity and strategic relationships.

A company's Organizational Readiness may drive or inhibit its ability to act upon and implement new ideas and strategies, and to successfully manage operational, political, cultural and financial demands that will follow.

Lastly, success will be enabled or limited by an organization's capacity for effective, Disciplined Implementation.

An organization moves beyond an ad hoc approach to innovation when it begins develop and institutionalize a cultural mindset and a set of processes that support repeatable, Sustainable Innovation. This then becomes a foundation for ongoing competitive advantage.