Most organisations grapple with strategic challenges. Whether it is to revisit their purpose, change their identity, create new services or products, or revamp their business model, change is a demanding task.
Transforming systems, organizing, and managing an organisation in flux is made even more difficult, because whatever occurs must happen quickly. Otherwise, innovations can be obsolete before they even come into play.
Regrettably, this often means innovation efforts fail. In most cases, this is because the organisation doesn’t have the resources needed to carry out innovative ideas. New strategies may not be flawed, but how they go about analysing and testing them often falls short.
Who are Strategic Thinkers?
Fortunately, strategic thinkers approach innovation in a new manner. They critically analyse complex business challenges, but also focus on corporate goals and future planning. They have excellent problem-solving and decision-making skills, but they are also willing to approach innovation in a new way.
Strategic thinkers look beyond past problems towards new solutions for current problems. They realize solutions may not be found within traditional organisational silos and are willing to explore alternative sources.
Why Organisations Need Strategic Thinkers
The importance of strategic thinking is that it allows an organisation to explore new trends and potential opportunities quickly. This ensures an organisation works proactively, not reactively.
Furthermore, strategic thinkers imagine change and plot actionable steps to attain organisational goals. They are willing to take risks initially to test hypotheses and accelerate innovation, instead of investing heavily in solutions that may not pan out well.
Of course, one of the principal goals of any strategic thinker is to increase the profit, productivity, and resilience within the organisation. By testing the waters carefully, these leaders can limit unwanted surprises, errors, and other unplanned consequences.
Why It Can Be Difficult to Foster Strategic Thinking in Organisations
Strategic thinkers may struggle within organisations for multiple reasons. A common issue is many have potentially beneficial ideas, but they don’t have in-house resources to test them out. Even if they have talent, it can take too long to test their ideas within a traditional tech silo.
However, lack of appropriate talent is more often the problem. The organisation may not have the budget to entice and hire highly-prized professionals. Furthermore, the scope of available apps and productivity tools available to organisations can be overwhelming. Partnering can help outcome this barrier.
Finally, strategic thinkers need to justify change to stakeholders. Up-to-date data can track the effectiveness of change. However, strategic thinkers expect some level of failure. They minimize losses, learn from failure, and suggest alternatives based on facts, not conjecture.
Regrettably, without assistance even the most enthusiastic strategic thinker may falter when it comes time to plot a path towards innovation. They may rely too heavily on their own experiences, make inaccurate assumptions, limit diversity, or overcomplicate the process. They may also underestimate the cost and timelines needed to test their ideas.
Obviously, a knowledgeable strategic thinker is more likely to succeed. They can persuasively communicate their strategic ideas, build alliances, and demonstrate improvement through accurate data. Even though it is not possible to eliminate risk and unpredictability, it is certainly possible to minimize it. Plus, strategic thinkers can test ideas and spur decision-making more quickly and efficiently.
Successful Strategic Thinkers Partner to Overcome Obstacles
Business leaders need to be more strategic and innovative if they are to remain relevant. Fortunately, EarlyBirds can help organisations do both. We help organisations identify possible solutions and thoroughly examine the advantages and disadvantages of each one.
We offer four pathways towards collaboration and successful innovation and the following benefits:
- Reduced cost of innovation
- Quick increases in innovation capability, when required
- Connections to the best SMEs and innovators available
- Simple process
EarlyBirds Innovation Ecosystem
Our award-winning Innovation Ecosystem earned us the title of Global Open Innovation Platform of the Year 2023. This platform allows both innovation and strategic thinking in all areas of a business, whatever the technical or business challenge or potential opportunity the organisation wants to explore.
We unite Innovators, Early Adopters, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to fuel rapid innovative adoption and business evolution. Early Adopters are leaders eager to identify new and disruptive technologies. They want to seize opportunities, solve business challenges, or create new products and services.
The Ecosystem has a data pool of over 4.9 million global innovations across many industries with solutions that may already address your organisation’s challenges. Alternatively, organisations can list their challenges and request solutions from innovators.
EarlyBirds Innovation Ecosystem Maps
EarlyBirds has also developed innovation ecosystem maps for both business or technical themes across the entire value chain, at a regional level or by specialisation. These maps are an ideal solution for strategic thinkers who desire to know what is currently available and their level of maturity.
These maps can provide a solution to challenges or identify potential innovators for beneficial partnerships. Maps are individualized for each organisation and specifically designed with organisational goals in mind.
EarlyBirds Explorer Program
The Explorer Program is tailored towards those who need innovation as a service to supplement existing innovation programs, or to conduct innovation projects when required. It is designed to speed up the process of technological innovation for the organisation as a service.
The Explorer program includes several features including quarterly and monthly innovation days; regular webinars to help stimulate innovation in the organisation; a focus on types of innovations; a platform enterprise license; and a nominated SME for the business.
EarlyBirds Challenger Program
The Challenger Program focuses on a single organisational or technical challenge. It looks for the most relevant innovators that meet your organisational, technical, and risk requirements.
The program is run by an EarlyBirds Subject Matter Expert who identifies your key issues. The SME then searches the data pool to identify and curate options for further evaluation. The most suitable option is chosen and the SME drafts a roadmap of next steps, POC, trial, or implementation.
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EarlyBirds offers efficient, organized, and automated innovation processes. Let us help you streamline workflows and enable cross-functional teams to ensure your organisation can discover, assess, and implement new technologies, quickly and effectively.
Organisations unsure of which option is best suited to their needs can reach out to schedule a consultation. An individualized approach is taken to ensure that the best possible solution is found for each business or leader. Alternatively, organisations can register at https://earlybirds.io/.
We’ve helped the Public Sector, Food Industry, Retail, Operations & Maintenance, Manufacturing, Finance & Insurance, Energy, Education, Cybersecurity, and many others. Let us help you discover and test potential innovative solutions for your organisation.