Guide for Revenue Growth and Solving Strategic Problems
Step 1: Disrupt the Status Quo
Keeping your products and services relevant and fresh is no easy task when the business landscape changes at lightspeed. The need to adapt is constant, and failure to adapt results in complex problems like stagnant growth, shrinking market share, and lost revenue.
““The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.” ”
If your tried-and-true strategies for business growth are no longer working, it might be time to get help developing a new strategy. Getting started is easier than you think.
How Align Can Help
The team at Align specializes in helping business leaders think differently to diagnose complex problems with a proven process for creating new, market-driven value. Using the 4 I’s of Strategic Innovation process, Align helps business leaders grow income and increase their impact by uncovering market gaps, developing new or improved solutions, and turning ideas into reality.
There’s a Proven Process for Innovation
While the stages of strategic innovation are universal, every project has a tailored approach to address your challenges and business goals. The important thing to know, is that innovation is a structured methodology - it’s not about tossing up disruptive ideas willy nilly and seeing what sticks.
Align’s 4 I’s of Strategic Innovation
INSIGHTS: Data gathering and analysis (stakeholder interviews, focus groups, internal discussions) that help (re)frame and define the problem to solve and the opportunities for improvement - often revealing blind spot and market gaps.
IDEAS: Engaging experiences and creative thinking prompts that provide a jolt of new perspectives to activate teams and uncover novel concepts - rooted in stakeholder insights and market research.
INCREMENTS: Tangible baby-steps for converting ideas into action, like concept testing, gathering proof from the market, and getting internal champions in place - so. your. ideas. get. traction. faster!
IMPACT: The business plan, dashboard, and build-measure-learn feedback loop that generates measurable results every step of the way toward your ultimate goal.
Step 2: Adopt a process centered on creating customer value.
Collecting Stakeholder Insights.
Choosing the right problem to address is key. Sure, you know the symptoms… but what’s the root cause? By gathering insights from different stakeholders you’ll gain a deeper understanding of what issues to address. To create new value and grow revenue you need to understand changing market needs and perspectives. Most likely, this is going to be a little different from how you see it. You’re an expert on your products & services, with an expert point of view. This is different from how your stakeholders experience the situation. You need an outside, objective perspective to make sense of what’s really going on - things customers don’t often tell you directly. Align uses an outside-in approach, employing interviews, focus groups, and surveys to gather insights, turning data into actionable guidance for developing innovative solutions.
Facilitating Ideas.
If you wait for inspiration to strike, you’ll get left behind. Strong, agile organizations create the right environment where good ideas can thrive. Align engages your team in a structured yet creative process that uncovers the ideas hidden within your team and sparked from the market research. Good facilitation and proven methods enable everyone to tap into their creative genius!
Strategic Planning.
In a rapidly changing environment, it's crucial to ensure your team is focused on the right strategic priorities for growth. Align enhances strategic planning by integrating innovation, helping you differentiate your offerings and create new value for customers.
Get Started With A Strategy Scorecard.
Align has developed a Strategy Scorecard to find the problems worth solving. You can do this step on your own, or with our help. For instance, is your challenge related to customer acquisition or differentiation? Or is the issue more related to internal operations and ensuring you have expertise for tackling new and emerging challenges? The Strategy Scorecard is what you get when you combine a SWOT exercise with the Balanced Scorecard. This is a great exercise for building consensus among internal leaders.
Step 3: Initiate an Innovation Team
With a firm grasp of where to target your efforts, you can document the scope of your innovation efforts with an Innovation Charter. This lays out the goals, areas of the business to target and the key activities that your team will use in your customized innovation project. Align will help you craft an Innovation Charter with a detailed problem statement and success criteria, including outlining the reason for the innovation project. This gets everyone on the same page and is our first step toward clarity and concrete measurable success.
Step 4. Take Action
Schedule a 30-minute discovery call with Align to discuss your goals, your current scenario, and where you think you need help. We’ll provide feedback about how and where the 4 I’s of Strategic Innovation applies to the goals you want to achieve.
Are you ready to learn more? Visit www.alignltd.com/services for more info.