In times of turbulence and uncertainty, the strategy and innovation portfolios combine to seize short-term and long-term opportunities to act as catalysts for change.
Therefore, it is necessary to align roadmaps and portfolios that adapt to the new realities of the market and society.
The resulting portfolios must have at least the following characteristics:
- Collaboration with areas and people to redefine and realign innovation objectives to the new economic and service reality.
- Get resources and funding for the creation and maintenance of the two portfolios: current and resulting. Depending on the resources, the initiatives of each of them can be executed sequentially or in parallel.
- Define expectations of innovation initiatives according to the dimensions of focus, participation and breadth. Portfolio dimensions encompass areas, for example, such as automation, process simplification, efficiencies for survival or immediate benefits, long-term strategic innovation, business changes, models, etc.
- Identify immediate changes to contribute to the company's income statement and relevance.
Each portfolio varies according to the size of the company, the sector and the external and internal economic climate of the company. In the face of uncertainty, at an early stage, the portfolio can focus on incremental innovation with short-term benefits to later be balanced by larger changes to the business model, structures, or market.
Work teams see their creativity and productivity increase in times of restriction or scarcity.
Leading strategy and innovation portfolios must bring in executive teams to redefine and realign corporate innovation goals to new market and business objectives.
For example, during COVID-19, in the short term, remote work and collaboration technology capabilities have been fully adopted as people must stay at home. The long-term impact is that companies can now expand their capabilities, as employees can be recruited from all over the world instead of being limited to one city and its office.
The resulting new model therefore has at least the following elements that must be evaluated and balanced both at the level of global strategy and individual initiative.
Changes in initiative portfolios
Market changes lead to changes in expectations and behaviors that ultimately change the value proposition, capacity, and overall business/service model.
It's important to break down silos and include key team members who can make decisions and execute.
With the right people in team workgroups, decisions like canceling unused capacity can be made immediately.
Investment optimization acceleration team:
Cost optimization is a key component when changing investment spending on R&D&i into new efficiencies for the entity or effectiveness for customers.
Additionally, it can be used to test growth projects and identify axes (customer, quality, savings,...) before larger investments are made.
Determine the impact
For each scenario and initiative, it is necessary to carefully analyze the impacts on the components of the existing business model such as the capabilities of people, processes, channels. IT&Ops, support departments, trends, partners, etc.
Realign or create new strategies and goals
It is necessary to evolve and align strategies and innovation goals for new business dynamics that were identified as part of the previous steps.
La digital workplace strategy it must be balanced to maintain short-term objectives and achieve long-term objectives, prosper and grow as a result of them beyond the current situation in which the entity and the market find themselves.
If you venture down this path without an innovation strategy and framework in place, it must be created in advance.
