Strategy

Why do organizations tend to pull back budgets for exploration and opportunity discovery when they fail to meet their revenue goals, despite having aggressive revenue targets moving forward?

When uncertainty creeps into the core business, the natural reaction is to stay away from it. But this is actually 'risk-taking'. Isn’t continuing to execute the way 'it’s always been done' in the face of uncertainty a path to failure?

 It does not have to be a resource intensive endeavor. The goal is to bust assumptions and cut through biases to gain new knowledge, mitigating risk and improving efficiency in delivering the desired outcome. The likelihood is that teams will also discover insights that point to new growth opportunities.

People often aren’t conscious of their needs or how to address them. This explains why we buy a lot of things we don’t need. Because of this, if one wants to create value in the world, it’s up to product managers to understand needs. In other words, they shouldn’t be asking customers what they want or asking them to predict how they might behave in the future. 

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In established businesses, leaders and employees assume the blueprint they use to execute on the business is fixed. But as the last few years demonstrate, little is fixed. Pandemic, war, supply chain issues, ransomware attacks, inflation–it’s crazy out there! All these events ripple across the business landscape, disrupting the markets. The blueprint maybe doesn’t work anymore.

How do you fix that?

Unlike Horizon Planning where projects are prioritized based on "level of innovation" and "time to ROI", Visibility Planning is based on evidence. In other words, we estimate the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes and when, based on market data and insights. We measure progress toward desired outcomes, which determines the time horizon.

What if your portfolio planning included visibility? With Moves The Needle's Prioritization Tool you can identify ideas that require exploration as well projects that should be funded because they are high impact with high evidence of success.

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The current model of horizon planning has diverged from its original thesis. Instead of focusing on growth or new revenues, it has been molded into three time horizons based on "level of innovation." The fundamental problems with this model is two-fold. First, true innovation is unpredictable, so you can't lay it out on a time horizon. Second, growth can come from numerous places, not just "innovation". Where is not determined by the tine horizon or the model itself. Companies that prioritize their projects based on the incorrect assumption of "time to ROI" clearly means an inefficient allocation of resources.

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Do companies know how to innovate? Should innovation be part of an individual’s job title? Should it be in a job description? Does a company even need to innovate? Most big companies think technology when thinking about innovation, regardless of whether or not they’re technology companies. Startups are often considered to be de facto innovators, but is that the case?

Brad D. Smith, Executive Chairman of the Board of Intuit, shares his lessons in leadership and the role of a CEO in nurturing innovation. He talks about developing a Founder's mindset, the importance of creating a learning environment where people treat success and failure the same way, and how to deliver the numbers today and reimagine the company for the future.

During M&As, it can often be challenging to effectively integrate two cultures. In today’s episode, Zakaria Ghassouli, People, Finance & Strategy Director at Avito, talks us through how he proactively used the M&A he went through with Avito as an opportunity to create a better culture after taking the passive approach began to lead to some problems.

In the episode, we dive into how BEA Systems, a multinational aerospace, defense, and information security company has organized their innovation strategy into 4 operational buckets and how they not only identify new products but innovate on the core business.

We also talk about how they have done a fantastic job getting rid of the distance between the end customer and new product development teams amongst other things.

In this episode we interview Simon at Spotify and cover how Spotify manages “bets," strategic decision making and execution with Spotify Rhythm
and more! He also shares how The Library Corporation coped with the disruption of library’s, how The Library Corporation introduced Lean Startup into their organization, and why the part time initiative model isn’t conducive to innovation
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Today’s episode is hands down one of my favorites as it’s filled with practical tips, tactics and stories to building a more entrepreneurial organization. It’s our first time doing a host chat, where I’m joined by the Moves the Needle Co-founders, Brant Cooper and Aaron Eden.