Week 8

Learn

Strategy Innovation vs. Strategic Planning
(Source: The power of Strategy Innovation, by Robert E. Johnston et al.)

A strategy innovation process consists of:

Creative

• Strategy innovation requires a creative process, not an analytical one. It requires people to listen to customers in new ways, design new type of products, and envision strategies for markets that do not currently exist.

Market-Centric

• Strategy innovation requires a market-centric process, not one that is company-centric. Eg, if markets need household products at lower prices, companies should explore innovative ways of providing them. Successful strategy innovation requires a new business opportunity add significant value for both the customer and the company to be worthwhile. However, the starting point for that consideration should be the needs of the customer/market, not the company's needs.

Heuristic

• Strategy innovation is a grassroots, discovery ("heuristic") process that is dependent on the quality of the insights gained along the way. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it takes many iterations before a breakthrough is achieved.
• Strategic planning process start the planning with "today" and then make projections, based on historical trends and today's statistics, out to "tomorrow".
• Strategy innovation process starts with "tomorrow" and then plans backwards to "today".

Summary, a process of strategy innovation should be the "fuzzy front end" of an overall strategy creation process, leading from opportunity identification and creation (strategy innovation) to opportunity evaluation and integration (strategic planning).

Do strategy innovation, THEN do strategic planning.

Unlearn

In this past one week, I had learnt so much of new knowledge on Strategic Planning and Implementation. When there are reflections need to be made for decision making, I had taken an approach to understand the corporate strategy in order to align my business unit strategy with corporate level.

Relearn

When I have a reflections of what i had learnt from Strategy Innovation, I realised my E-card program that i would want to develop for my Pfizer's private hospital, has elements of strategy innovation because it leads from opportunity identification and creation(strategy innovation) to opportunity evaluation and integration(strategic planning).