The Credera Brief

In our latest edition of The Credera Brief video series, Credera Partner Kara Williams shares how to set a structured innovation strategy that’s guided by nature and pressure testing.

Connecting Nature and Evolution to Innovation

In our experience working with a variety of clients, we often see organizations struggle to set innovation strategies. Why? Usually, it’s one of three reasons:

Innovation is poorly defined.
Innovation is perceived as a cluster of expensive, wild ideas that lead to nothing.
Innovation exists as an immeasurable concept.

But what if businesses setting an innovation strategy became one of the most normal, natural, and evolutionary choices they could make? What if those poorly defined, wild ideas lead to something expected and measurable?

Harvard Business Review likened the connection to nature and evolution as a great model for innovation strategy and execution. Two concepts from nature stand out as models for innovation: variance evolution, or the never-ending cycle of life form creation, and selection pressure, or the act of choosing those life forms that can best thrive in a particular environment.

These two concepts reinforce Credera’s structured innovation process that relies on inquiry, feedback, and iteration at the heart of building testable outcomes, rather than free form ideation or once in a generation futuristic vision.

Setting an innovation strategy can be structured and measured through enterprise-level strategy maps and consideration of how goals will naturally evolve over time. Looking to the future and casting strategic goals forward two, five, or 10-plus years can create scenarios suited for pressure testing. Doing so affirms these goals are key for viability, growth, contraction, competition, and other market forces.

Much like the natural selection process seeks favorable traits in response to an organism’s environment, choosing innovation goals that show strength and hold up against multiple market forces promises longevity and success.

Interested in learning more about Credera’s structured innovation approach? Explore how we help organizations lead through innovation to execute winning initiatives.

At Credera, we believe the toughest business challenges are best solved by a team—a team who works together to share knowledge to accomplish their goals.

We created The Credera Brief series to distill trends and ideas from Credera leaders and experts. These short-form videos share different insights and perspectives across the topic spectrum from MarTech and innovation to strategy and technology.

You can find the complete series on our YouTube page, or reach out to [email protected] to continue the conversation.