Innovation NavigatorStrategic Game
Design the innovation portfolio instead of defaulting to it: audit where budget, time and people actually go across three horizons, set a target mix with a reason, and protect the newer horizons with their own metrics, forums, budgets and staged funding.
Leadership teams at annual planning, board strategy reviews, R&D and capability investment decisions, and any moment when the core business is quietly absorbing all the effort meant for what comes next.
From everything we ship is innovation to three horizons, one designed portfolio.
Established organizations tend to let exploiting what already works crowd out exploring what’s next, because exploitation pays sooner and more surely. Across studies, organizations that both exploit and explore tend to perform better than those that do only one. Deciding in advance what will stop a new initiative, stage by stage, tends to guard against staying the course because of what’s already invested.
Place every initiative in H1, H2 or H3 and read the real mix through three lenses: what was spent, where leadership time went, and where the last hires went. Established organizations tend to let what already works crowd out what’s next, so the audit reads what happened, not what was planned.
Choose the mix for the next eighteen months from your market and your core, using 70/20/10 only as a reported reference. Organizations that both exploit and explore tend to perform better than those that do only one.
Give each H2 and H3 initiative its own metric, its own forum and its own budget line, and fund it in stages with a kill criterion at each. Deciding in advance what will stop an initiative tends to guard against staying the course because of what’s already invested.
Also runs as a half day · P4.12 HD
Half day (3 h 30 min), “See the real strategy, then design the portfolio”: P4.4 Inside-Out Strategic Perspective on one evidence pack in the morning, then this lab’s horizon mix on the same initiatives, with the target carried forward from the audit, the newer horizons protected and every move funded, and a quarterly portfolio review.
Read the strategy the organization is actually running and design the innovation portfolio from it: grade the stated strategy against one evidence pack, tag the same initiatives to three horizons, set a target that carries the audit forward, and protect and fund every move by naming what in the core stops, shrinks or pauses to pay for it.
Leadership teams at annual planning, strategy offsites and board strategy reviews, before a large capital or capability allocation, and any organization whose core business is quietly absorbing the effort meant for what comes next.
What people intend and what they do often differ, so the strategy is read from the evidence, laid out before anyone grades it. Established organizations tend to let exploiting what already works crowd out exploring what’s next, and across studies, organizations that do both tend to perform better than those that do only one. Deciding in advance what will stop a new initiative, stage by stage, tends to guard against staying the course because of what’s already invested.
The stated strategy on five dimensions beside what was spent, the leadership hours, the hires and the decisions, each row graded Aligned, Drift, Gap or Blank with one piece of evidence, and a decision on which side is right. What people intend and what they do often differ, and we tend to look for evidence that confirms what we already believe.
The same initiatives tagged H1, H2 or H3, the mix read by budget, hours and hires, every row not graded Aligned carried forward, and the target set with a reason. Organizations that both exploit and explore tend to perform better than those that do only one.
The four protections for each initiative in the starved horizon, and for every move, what in H1 stops, shrinks or pauses to pay for it, with an owner and a date. Deciding in advance what will stop an initiative tends to guard against staying the course because of what’s already invested.
The thinking behind this lab, published in full: