The difference between innovative organizations and their more staid competitors can be stark. Some businesses sprint to the head of their respective industries due to their ability to keep developing bold new concepts and stay in a constant state of evolution.
The key difference between innovators and lagging companies is their ability to generate breakthrough ideas. By harnessing the best efforts of their most skilled people, industry-leading companies can put new products on the market that change their industries, forcing competitors to catch up.
Every company wants to be Apple, willing the smartphone market into existence; or Netflix, changing the way viewers consume media and creating a paradigm other companies had to adjust to. The question is how to access these game-changing concepts and the resulting competitive advantage.
This talent for innovation isn't something innate or immutable — it's something leaders can learn. When you seek out executive education directly from leading business thinkers like MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Bill Fischer, you can add these concepts to your own organizational approach.
Read more: Learn how executive education helped participants foster their professional journeys.
What is strategic innovation?
The most effective organizations at developing new products, services, and business concepts don't wait for unpredictable inspiration to strike. Instead, they implement a process-based strategic approach to maximize their chances of success in innovation projects. This is strategic innovation.
Companies that embrace an innovation strategy are better able to:
- Introduce creative ideas into the market.
- Make the most of their employees' knowledge.
- Optimize their processes by connecting all elements of the business.
To turn your business into an innovation-based organization and chase those advantages, you may have to fundamentally change your business processes, models, and principles. There are various theories about how to achieve that kind of transformation, depending on which thinkers you follow.
While it may be tempting to follow models that recommend relying on "heroes" or "champions" within the organization to drive innovation, Fischer doesn't believe that's the best approach. Turning to a few innovative thinkers within the company to propose innovative ideas reveals limitations in the company's processes. Fischer is in favor of revising those processes to uplift more people and departments.
Businesses contain many talented individuals capable of generating breakthrough ideas. These people work in many departments at all levels of the value chain. A company that has mastered the strategic innovation process will engage its personnel early and often, drawing on their knowledge to fuel new concepts.
Implementing strategic innovation into processes
Due to the seismic impact of strategic innovation on the way a company functions, implementing this idea can be easier said than done. Even when you take a very intentional approach to fostering innovation initiatives, there is no one-step way to do so.
Some considerations that go into building an innovation strategy include:
- Fostering internal generation of breakthrough ideas: Empowering your employees to come up with industry-shaking new concepts is a worthwhile goal. To achieve it, you need to help them communicate with one another and emphasize that bold new ideas are welcome.
- Linking technology and business strategy: Your chosen tech tools should complement the way your company operates, especially in today's digitally driven business environment. Tech platforms are the prime enablers of collaboration capabilities, and thus, of radical innovation.
- Integrating product development with the value chain: Product development is at its best when it doesn't occur in a bubble. Thinking about logistics early can help your company introduce new ideas that are both transformative and practical.
- Engaging talent across the value chain: Contributions from up and down the value chain can introduce interesting new perspectives that will help your products thrive. This is an important aspect of widening your strategic scope, letting many departments' stakeholders contribute.
- Developing organizational strategies that prioritize sustainable growth: Rather than focusing solely on the present, innovative organizations have one eye on the future. Planning for sustainable growth can set your business up for productive years pursuing your strategic objectives.
- Collaborating with customers, users, and suppliers: Products are built for audiences. When you become adept at taking the pulse of your user base and suppliers, you'll be well-positioned to deliver game-changing innovations that suit real needs.
- Adjusting to short product cycles: Companies that fall out of step with today's speedy digital product cycles may find themselves naturally behind the curve within their industries. Prioritizing agility and flexibility can help your organization escape this trap.
To build such an organization and cultivate innovative ideas, Fischer recommends developing innovation doctrines that create conditions where breakthroughs can emerge and thrive. Leaders sometimes find it challenging to shift from more traditional mindsets to create these environments.
One key reason innovation doctrines are tricky to implement comes from the fact that they're based on beliefs rather than practices. Systems that prioritize innovation don't have to be built around people who all work or think the same way. Rather, they're based on everyone buying into shared principles.
What's the impact of strategic innovation?
All this focus on strategic innovation as a corporate priority is worthwhile because of its possible impact on your organization. Innovative companies are the ones that have the potential to change the norms in their respective industries and lead the next evolution, rather than following.
Companies with an innovative mindset are able to draw ideas from many sources. In some cases, this means working with stakeholders up and down the value chain. In others, it means looking to the customer base to find out about a need that should be filled. In still other scenarios, businesses can take in ideas from beyond their industries to fuel their next breakthroughs.
Fischer notes that adopting such an outside-in innovation mindset is a leadership question, not a technical question. To become such a leader, you have to be comfortable with the fact that your business will sometimes venture into new territory. If you can adopt this mindset — and convince your colleagues to follow you — you're on a promising path for innovation.
Managing innovation initiatives can present ostensible paradoxes:
- Strong leadership in this regard means fostering bottom-up creativity rather than imposing top-down rules.
- Being creative is a process best approached with discipline.
- The most important lessons for your company may come from outside of your ecosystem.
Studying innovation with industry experts is a way to internalize new ways of thinking and embrace these concepts.
Learning about strategic innovation through executive education
MIT Sloan Executive Education has helped many leaders discover the best ways to add innovation management to their skill sets. Sometimes their motivation is to remain relevant within the world of corporate management, while in other cases, these participants are planning to become founders of their own ventures.
Learning from the best minds in the field is a way to unlock your potential for innovation and deliver a competitive advantage. Collaborating with your fellow participants in the course is also important for honing your ideas and abilities as you expand your vision.
Rather than a single skill set, strategic innovation is a mindset that combines many practices and priorities. It's complex, but you can learn it, and the impact of delivering disruptive innovation can be considerable.
Enroll in MIT Sloan Executive Education courses to learn about the strategic innovation process directly from the experts. Offerings from Bill Fischer include Driving Strategic Innovation and Business Model Innovation for Organizational Transformation.