What is it for?

How to implement your Innovation Strategy

The six suggested steps form a useful canvas to break down your innovation strategy and and thoroughly address each necessary stage. Examine yourself and your company in order to make the right choices and transform the formulation of a strategy from a burdensome, messy and divisive task into a simple and systematic exercise.

How to use it

A step-by-step guide

STEP 1
An innovation strategy starts with the classic and indispensable step of gathering in-depth self-knowledge. Check, then, the effectiveness of the main innovation capabilities you already have and identify areas for improvement. To understand where you are now you will need to use both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

STEP 2
Decide on your goals and strategic approach. This will help you make decisions about how to allocate resources and determine whether you are investing too much or too little in the right types of innovation for growth. Then ask yourself what you want to achieve and why you want to innovate.

STEP 3
Align expectations with ambitions for growth. You should establish now what you expect to achieve — it is from misguided or delayed setting of expectations that much of the disappointment comes. Expected outcomes should not only be financial, but also involve other dimensions such as category leadership, social impact, or new economic models.

STEP 4
To align the strategy with the company’s vision and mission, you must first analyze the external and internal factors that could influence it. Here you have plenty of tools to study your target market and analyze your customers and competitors.

STEP 5
Knowing the playing field is important, but the Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is what can really determine – or destroy – your innovation strategy. It is the factor that will give you a competitive advantage (thus achieving the goal of innovation). So make sure you know your real value.

STEP 6
Finally, you will need to figure out how you are going to achieve success with your initiative: what systems you are going to put in place to support the advancement of the strategy, what techniques you are going to need to connect the elements of an innovation infrastructure, and what metrics you are going to use to measure the results you achieve.

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