How to Align Innovation with Corporate Strategy

Written by Jale Gonulkapan Suder

Innovation was the buzzword of the last decade, often portrayed as the remedy for the complex problems businesses face in the digital age. In many cases, it has been. However, the critical question remains: is innovation for the sake of innovation enough?

As a business leader, fostering an innovation culture in your organization may sound promising, but it's essential to consider whether it genuinely serves your strategic priorities. How can you remain aligned with your corporate mission while seeking innovative ways of doing business? The challenge lies in ensuring that innovation projects within the organization are designed to serve the core purpose and long-term objectives of the company. Misalignment can lead to wasted resources, including time, money, and personnel, ultimately stifling innovative efforts and resulting in missed opportunities.

A comprehensive Strategic Innovation Framework is crucial. From our experience, this framework should include several key components: a clear definition of corporate identity and strategic goals, communication of strategic priorities, encouragement of experimentation, building an innovation portfolio, and measuring the impact of innovation initiatives.

1. Know Yourself

The question of "who we are" is often overlooked with about us pages filled with business clichés instead of meaningful definitions of corporate missions. However, this is where you should start. Take the time and effort to re-evaluate and redefine your corporate identity. Understand the organization’s mission and strategic priorities. What is the core purpose of your company? What are your values, and how do you integrate these values into your business actions? What are your short-term and long-term strategic goals? Which objectives do you prioritize? At the end of the day, innovation initiatives should support and enhance your organization’s characteristics rather than divert from them.

2. Communicate and Integrate

After defining your corporate mission and developing your strategic guidance, sharing it widely within the organization is necessary. Ensure that strategic priorities are well understood across the organization through meetings, internal communications, and other channels. Make the north star visible! As a leader, set the tone for open communication, acknowledge and encourage innovative efforts, and combine diverse skills and perspectives to foster creative solutions. Regularly communicate the importance of innovation within the context of the corporate mission and strategic priorities. Innovation should be seen as an integral part of the company’s operations and growth plans, not just a separate department’s job.

3. Encourage Strategic Experimentation

By nature, innovation is experimental. Let your teams have the freedom and space to explore diverse ideas within the scope of your strategic goals. This can be trickier than it sounds. If your goals are too strictly defined and specific, it may limit creative and lateral thinking. On the other hand, if your goals are vaguely articulated, you could end up with no tangible outcomes. Your strategic objectives need to be clear enough to be measurable yet open enough to inspire creativity. Create an environment where calculated risks are taken, and lessons are learned from both successes and failures.

4. Build an Innovation Portfolio

Your strategic priorities may change over time, based on market needs or evolving technologies and trends. You know the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”; be flexible enough to pivot or discontinue initiatives that are not delivering the desired results. Adopt various methods to develop promising new innovative projects inside and outside the organization. Building an innovation portfolio through a mix of projects can ensure that the best ones go forward and remain aligned with the corporate mission.

5. Measure and Adjust

Continuously evaluate the progress of innovation projects against strategic objectives. Adjustments should be made as necessary to maintain alignment. Implement feedback mechanisms to gather input from employees, customers, and stakeholders about innovation efforts. Adopt a mindset of continuous improvement, regularly refining innovation efforts to better align with strategic goals.

Aligning innovation with corporate strategy is a dynamic and ongoing process. There is no one-size-fits-all formula. Your organization may need tailored guidance on how to successfully align innovative projects with strategic priorities. To learn more about our approach, contact us at hello@ocadu.co, and let’s start a conversation.