STRATEGIC INNOVATION

Strategic Innovation Consulting for New Opportunities and Business Development and Growth

Need your next growth opportunity? Do you want to identify new products, services, service models and consumer experiences to boost profit streams?

Many organizations find it difficult to commit time and resources to think strategically about the future when short-term measures and firefighting are the norm. Ensuring that today's actions are aligned with long-term business goals and objectives is a significant challenge, especially when the company lacks well-articulated and innovative strategies.

Most "visioning" exercises produce a description of a desired end state, along with an action plan based on a "gap analysis." While the vision may be bold, the specific opportunities, business models, and supporting strategies are often high-profile. , making short-term action planning and success measures elusive. While you may have a desired end state and list of activities, you often lack a structured yet flexible strategic framework to move forward.

Questions that keep you up at night:  

• • What is the most compelling future for our business and how do we achieve it?
  • How can we influence the evolution of our industry to reflect our desired future vision?
  • How do we link our strategic intent and goals to the most promising short-term and long-term growth opportunities?

• How can we ensure that our current short-term activities are aligned with our long-term strategic business goals?

Breakthroughs happen when we push boundaries: our own, our team's, and our organization's. And there are several ways to do this:

• Increase in organizational silos
• Create a radical diversity of teams.
• Develop customer empathy.
• Find inspiration from nature and biology.
• Look for analogs from other industries
• Explore converging technologies
• Find adjacent and non-adjacent markets.
• Infuse new perspectives by engaging external “thought leaders”

 

At the heart of your strategic roadmap is the value your company will deliver to specific market segments over time, backed by the strategies, capabilities, technologies, partnerships, and business models necessary for near-term success. , medium and long term.

Just as important as your vision and roadmap, however, is Strategic Alignment, necessary to quickly propel your organization into committed action. Unlike other firms that leave you with a report and set of recommendations, our experience is that innovative strategies require transformational leadership to drive them within the organization.

Our approach explicitly addresses the alignment of senior leadership and other key internal and external stakeholders, including employees, business partners, customers, suppliers, etc., throughout the strategy and planning process. The emphasis of our initiatives depends entirely on our client's strategic focus and may include identifying new opportunities in creating growth strategies for technology areas such as client target markets such as Millennial consumers or other topics. Engaging the organization in a highly collaborative process lays the groundwork for accelerated decision making and rapid implementation.

CONSULTANCY IN BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION –  Get ahead of the competition with an innovative new business model

Are your margins shrinking? Is competitive differentiation increasingly difficult? Do you need a new strategy and business model?

Every business has a business model. The challenge is that some business models successfully provide strategic differentiation, competitive advantage, and the foundation for sustained growth and innovation, while others do not.

Business model innovation is essential to the short- and long-term health of the company. As the primary driver of value, revenue and profit, business models must continually be invented and reinvented as market conditions change. Successful business models often contain a creative spark, something that breaks the assumptions of the market and competitors.

InnovationPoint recently completed a study (sponsored by the Finnish government) highlighting key trends and emerging business models for the 21st century global service economy. This research is available to our clients and can be applied by product and service companies to take them to the next level of business model innovation.

Questions that keep you up at night:  

• How can we go beyond our historical product orientation and create high-value solutions underpinned by innovative business models?
• How do we capture value in our industry in new ways that drive further differentiation and growth?
• What solutions can we create that deliver the most value to the customer and subsequently lock out the competition?
• How can we use the services to optimize revenue and profit?
• What is the ecosystem of stakeholders and partners that will create the most powerful business model?
• How can we use our business model as the engine for sustainable innovation?

InnovationPoint brings a holistic and collaborative approach to business model innovation.
We help established companies overcome the critical challenges posed by their existing mindset and industry assumptions by combining our competencies in strategic thinking, business strategy development, product and service innovation, change management, and operational planning. Our facilitated and highly collaborative approach creates a team of entrepreneurs, business managers, visionaries, and pragmatists in an organization. By finding common ground between different perspectives, personal styles, values, and agendas, we forge alignment around the roadmap that will help your company move toward its next winning business model.

Assessments and Consulting to Create a Culture of Innovation

Create a culture of innovation for your organization through proven assessments and culture change strategies.

Do you want a culture of innovation? Do you need to break down silos, foster collaboration and drive value creation across your organization?

Almost everyone wants to be more innovative. But organizations define "innovation" differently. Some see it as the introduction of new products, while others measure the success of the innovation in terms of new services, customer experiences, business models, or internal practices. And while some organizations are revered as "innovators" (everyone wants to know the secrets of Apple, Google, and other high-end users), many continually struggle to find their stride.

All companies, whether successful with innovation or not, have one thing in common: They have their own "personalities," their own particular organizational culture: the shared experiences, values, norms, assumptions, and beliefs that shape individual and group behavior. , and that (for better or worse) impacts your success with innovation.

We wrote the book on innovation culture – literally. The invisible advantage has been described by the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, USA Today, and elsewhere. We help our clients create cultures of innovation through assessments, consulting engagements, leadership development programs, and by creating broad-based employee training programs.

Our Culture of Innovation Assessments uncover the deepest barriers and untapped opportunities to drive further innovation and business growth. Through tailored surveys and in-depth interviews, we create a map of your organization's culture that creates the foundation for action-oriented programs designed to pull the various strategic and tactical levers needed to change the culture. These levers include:

• Strategy and business model – The explicit (or implicit) functional design of the organization and the strategies to compete and grow, given the external environment.

• Leadership  – How the organization's leaders influence the strategic direction and day-to-day operations, both through explicit communications and their more subtle behaviors.

• processes  – How strategies are executed and how work is done through day-to-day practices and interactions, both internally and externally. This can be very broad and includes: the ways the company interacts with its customers/consumers; the ways in which various internal functions/departments interact in relation to innovation; the ways in which information is shared; the ways in which employees contribute new ideas; the ways ideas are prioritized, tested, developed, phased out, and implemented

• structures  – Formal/informal organization principles and functional designs (internal and external), which enable (or inhibit) collaboration and guide employee behavior.

• People – The skills and mindset of the people who work together, including employees, external partners and suppliers, etc. This has implications for hiring and training.

• Metrics, Incentives, Recognition and Rewards  – The formal and informal measures that drive the kinds of innovation-related behaviors an organization wants to see from individuals, teams, and departments. There is often an unhealthy tension between long-term corporate aspirations and short-term metrics.

• enabling technology  – Capabilities and tools (for example, Internet-based communication/collaboration tools, idea management or idea competition applications, etc.), that enable employees (and external partners and customers) to connect, share knowledge and innovate

To foster sustainable business growth, today's leaders must play a proactive role in fostering an organizational culture by pulling on the mechanisms that drive strategic innovation.

InnovationPoint Advisors in Demand – Virtual 1:1
Innovation Coaching from Strategic Innovation Experts

With all the fuss and hype about “innovation”, many companies feel great pressure to understand and harness their innovation potential. But they often don't know how to get started, have limited resources (time, people, money), and are hesitant to hire a consulting firm for a large-scale engagement.

advisers of InnovationPoint on Demand  It is a flexible consulting service that gives you practical and personalized advice from our experienced professionals, when you need it. We bring fresh perspectives and an innovative lens to the business problems that keep you up at night.

What's different is that it's time-boxed, responsive to your budget, and delivered how and when you want it. We work with individuals and teams, agreeing up front on what the scope is, what a successful outcome looks like, how, when, and how often they engage, and to define a budget that works for you.

advisers of InnovationPoint on Demand Services can be provided in a variety of ways: by phone, Skype, or web conference. You can hire us for a couple of hours, for a few weeks or for several months.

Topics include:

• Growth Through Innovation: What do we need to do to identify the next big wave of growth for our business?
• Innovation leadership: What changes do I personally need to make to inspire and drive innovation?
• Innovation processes: What specifically should we do to drive innovation in our organization? What tools do we need? How should we engage differently, with our customers and external partners?
• Organizing for Innovation: How can we overcome our silo mentality and improve cross-functional collaboration? What are the pros and cons of setting up an 'innovation function' or appointing a Chief Innovation Officer?
• People: What changes do we need to make in our hiring and training, to drive innovation?
• Innovation metrics: How can we better measure, motivate, recognize and reward innovation?
• Technology that enables innovation: How can we use technology to stimulate creativity and drive collaboration among our employees?
• Culture of innovation: What is needed to develop the capacity for innovation and foster a more innovative culture? How do we start?
• Opportunity to take a look at Reality: How viable are the ideas/opportunities we are currently working on? How can we improve them and quickly bring them to market? We work with companies of any size in any industry. The common thread is that they struggle with innovation. We are typically hired by managers and leaders in marketing, consumer research, research and development, human resources, and other functions who are confident in their ability to execute, but want a proven sounding board to help ensure success.

Contact us for more information about our I Advisor services.InnovationPoint Advisors in demand