Unlocking Strategic Innovation by Reimagining Design By Kevin Bethune

 

1. How can you better balance short-term and long-term thinking?
   Change is the only thing that’s guaranteed. Business leaders need to reflect on how much they think about the future versus the present. The best organizations have mindsets with a 50/50 split: 50% of decisions are focused on the short-term, 50% are focused on the future. The short term is the here and now, the imperative to deliver, to be mindful. The long-term is always looking to the future, always collecting inspirations, always filling your corporation’s walls with observations of what’s happening with your stakeholders, and industry. Consider reflecting on your current ratio of short term vs. long-term thinking, decide what that ratio should actually be, and then make the necessary adjustments to ensure you have the right balance. 

2. How can you clarify your growth goals to help crystallize your strategy?
   Businesses care deeply about growth, but they have to also understand and contextualize what type of growth they desire. Any time your organization is looking at an avenue for growth, you need to reflect on the type of growth that you’re after, and how to help the organization navigate the associated ambiguity and uncertainties. Do we need to be hyper respectful of the core business that we’ve already created and ensure that we’re fixing broken things by re-engineering the existing structure? Do we need to extend the benefits of the existing structure through re-imagining how certain customer journeys and outcomes manifest? Or, do we need to start to think about disrupting ourselves before the marketplace does, by thinking about ways to create new growth avenues that could maybe replace the core business at some point down the road. Most importantly, are we being proactive enough to discuss and formulate those new constructs?

3. How can you encourage more multidisciplinary thinking in your teams? 
   Multidisciplinary collaboration is the currency that will inform the future innovation, especially as we’re faced with more complicated challenges, such as the acceleration of computation, artificial intelligence, and technology. Multidisciplinary teams allow us to see the future through a multitude of different vantage points. We can dissect stakeholder value criteria. We can challenge “industry first” principles, and question foundational beliefs that may be holding us back. Multidisciplinary teams also enable us to bring in all kinds of inspirational fodder to the conversation, and curate diverse trends that can inform our most important decisions. Organizations must prioritize collaboration in a way that allows teams to develop their own natural, creative sparks and connections.

4. How can you unlock the power of play more within your business?
   Play, creativity, and willingness to fail is imperative for today’s business owners. Have the creative courage to take a step forward, experiment, workshop, and rewire your organization to create a little bit more capacity for strategic innovation conversations. Invite more voices around the table, not just design. Look at the team makeup and ensure that you’re championing diversity, equity, inclusion. Consider taking creative, optimistic actions that you might have avoided in previous circumstances, and see what comes about.