Strategic feedback loops

A good innovation strategy clearly outlines the organisation's top priorities, as well as specific objectives and policies that will help achieve them.

Good leaders understand that their innovation strategy is an expression of the creators' (i.e., people were involved with formulation of the strategy):

• assumptions about how the world was, is, and might be, and
• understanding of where the organisation was, is, and wants to be.

Even in the best case when these assumptions are well informed and there is a shared understanding amongst all involved, the strategy shouldn't be an immutable object that's set in stone.

The assumptions laid in it must be explored while the understanding ought to be explicated.

When doing so, the leaders establish two important feedback loops:

• between the world at large and the strategy, and
• between the strategy and the organisation.

This ensures that the leaders have access to the broadest range of options, while still having ample time to act on them.