Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Tips & tricks for using megatrends for strategic innovation #2/5: 'discuss internally'


In the previous post of this series I discussed the selection of megatrends to include in the strategic innovation exercise.

The next step in using megatrends for strategic innovation is to brainstorm them internally. Don’t let any external consultant direct you into their opinions or convictions. Your people are the best judges on how to turn external market shifts into concrete opportunities for your business, so it makes sense to leverage all this internal knowledge.

However, to get the maximum out of these discussions, you’ll need to take a couple of rules into account (and, eventually, get some assistance from external people):
Organize ‘think tanks’ of 4-5 people per subject (demographic trends, geopolitical trends, climate and sustainability, etc)
  • Include people with different background,  functions and levels of seniority in the discussions… diversity enriches !
  • Take +/- 30 minutes discussion per trend;
  • Structure the discussion (impact on industry, impact on customers, impact on channels, …), for instance using the business model canvas; 
  • Brief the participants on forehand with a light, easy to read introduction to the trends that will be discussed –for instance with the megatrends fact sheets produced by i4fi.

Good thing is: people really appreciate to have discussions about the ‘bigger picture’ for their company –instead of the weekly commits and the day-to-day problems. It increases their involvement and commitment to the future of your business. In that sense it is also an excellent topic for part of your team meetings…


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