It’s Time to Focus on Stratovation

Innovation efforts need to feed organizational strategy

Published: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - 11:20

I have always been fascinated by new words. A few years ago Larry Potterfield, the Founder and CEO of Baldrige Award recipient MidwayUSA, shared one of his “words”: voluntold. “Voluntold” is helping people understand the wisdom of doing something that Larry thinks is good for the company (and them).

I recently read an article by Gerry Sandusky (not the former Penn State coach) in Quality Digest Daily in which he used the term probortunity. Probortunity is the unity between problems and opportunity, i.e., looking at ways to turn problems into opportunities.

So with the folks at Merriam-Webster probably looking askance at me, let me propose stratovation, the important unification of strategy and innovation. You might first say, “Aren’t they the same?” The answer to that question is clearly “no.” But should there be greater unity between them? I believe the answer is clearly “yes.” Let’s look at the differences between these concepts and why there is a need for greater commingling of the two.

Not all strategy is innovative, and not all innovations are strategic. According to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, strategy is about your organization’s approach to the future. Strategy might be built around new partnerships, revenue growth, divestitures, and new products or core competencies. Innovation involves adopting an idea, process, technology, product, or business model that is either new or new to its proposed application.

Good strategy should be about clarity in direction; it is the marching orders for the organization. Good innovation is about possibility; efforts are full of uncertainty and a significant number are likely to fail. Detecting failures early is the key so that resources can be reprioritized. As pointed out in a DigitalTonto blog, strategy is a logic chain that results in one set of choices rather than another. Innovation is about experimentation, multiple choices, and trying things out. Without strategy you lack direction. Without innovation you risk losing relevance as an organization.

So where does stratovation fit in? As product and technology cycles are becoming increasingly shorter, it is important to have ongoing innovation efforts to feed organizational strategy. Both successes and failures in innovation efforts can feed strategy and help in setting a clear direction. Organizations need a focused stratovation process, a mechanism for encouraging innovation and making sure outcomes of innovation efforts are hardwired to the strategic planning and thinking of the organization. Senior leaders need to set the climate for innovation and make sure there is a hardwired link to setting strategy. All workforce members are possible contributors to innovation. Senior leaders need to prioritize resources so that high potential innovations have the resources needed for exploration. It takes a proactive focus on stratovation for ongoing organizational success.

So, how is your organization set for stratovation?

First published Aug. 26, 2014, on Blogrige.

About The Author

Harry Hertz

Harry Hertz retired in June 2013 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where he had served as director of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program since 1995. For more than 15 years he was the primary architect of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, responsible for expansion of the Baldrige Program and Award to healthcare, education, and nonprofits, including government. Hertz serves on the advisory group for VHA’s Center for Applied Healthcare Studies, and on the adjunct faculty of American University. He has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and a Ph.D. from M.I.T.