How the Intersection of Strategy and Innovation Can Fuel Business Growth

I’ve been thinking about how important innovation is for an organization and what ingredients make it easier or more difficult. If you believe that innovation is necessary to remain a forward thinking business and continue to serve a rapidly evolving market … wonderful, that’s the most important step.

However, this doesn’t mean innovation will come easily or that innovative activities will produce an outcome that provides value to your market (and thus, to you).

The key is applying innovation through a clearly defined strategy. Strategy becomes the spark that makes innovation easy and powerful.

No spark, no movement.

The problem is: it’s impossible to innovate without direction because you don’t know what direction to innovate toward.

Innovation is the process of creating value by applying novel solutions to meaningful problems (source) and it’s absolutely necessary to know the unique way you plan to capture value from the market to explore those novel solutions.

Then, to decide which innovations are best for furthering your organization’s goals, you must consult your strategy to ensure you are making the right moves in the appropriate direction.

Without that direction, innovations are weak or misguided and either will fail to propel your organization forward and keep you competitive.

Fill up that tank.

What single idea is driving focused action in your organization?

How does that idea make you meaningfully different?

How can you apply that strategy to your product or service?

How does that strategy change the way you serve customers, hire, promote, and communicate?

Strategy is the fuel for your whole organization, including your ability to innovate. If you find your organization struggling to develop new ideas and adapt to a changing market … you may have found the problem.