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Top economic performers move into new digital offerings more boldly.
Do you dare?
Want a more innovative company? Check your aspirations—and your willingness to make tough choices.
Innovating bold
In this edition:
A winning operating model for digital strategy
Article
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A winning operating model for digital strategy
The innovation commitment
The innovation commitment
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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A quick briefing in five—
or a fifty-minute deeper dive
Get tough
Then make disciplined choices around innovation priorities, risk levels, and the resources needed to deliver innovation at scale.
Discover more Five Fifties
The innovation commitment
The innovation commitment
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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A winning operating model for digital strategy
A winning operating model for digital strategy
Aspire
But what is required to be bold? Look for the big aspirations that remake companies and industries.
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Disciplined
Tough choices require smart budgeting and resource allocation, as well as a willingness to scrutinize connections between your goals and your approach. Here are two suggestions:
Go green
Company leaders can also define a “green box,” which quantifies the growth that only innovation can produce.
More essentials
Aspiring and choosing may be two factors separating innovation leaders, but don’t overlook the other six essentials of innovation performance.
The eight essentials of innovation
The eight essentials of innovation
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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The eight essentials of innovation
The eight essentials of innovation
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
Organizations’ digital innovations, % of respondents
Entirely new digital offerings
Top economic
performers
All
others
Existing products enhanced with new digital features
Digital versions of formerly analog products
28
39
33
46
25
29
Gap of 45
percentage
points
Aspire: Set big innovation goals—and specific targets to reach them
% of companies that have mastered this innovation essential
65
20
Top performers
Laggards
Gap of 35
percentage
points
Choose: Prioritize and select innovation opportunities
% of companies that have mastered this innovation essential
47
12
Top performers
Laggards
The innovation commitment
The innovation commitment
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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No bad bets
Risk is intrinsic to innovation, but you can reduce the odds of placing or doubling down on bad bets through better decision making and closer scrutiny of assumptions.
better decision making
closer scrutiny of assumptions.
No rules of thumb
Toss out overused averages, crude benchmarks, and pie-in-the-sky dreams that can signal risky investments. Substitute clear links between innovation portfolios and aspirations, on the one hand, and the resources required, on the other.
The innovation commitment
The innovation commitment
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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Sample targets, $ billion
Innovation
theme
Protect the core
0.8
Diversification and adjacencies
0.3
Ecosystem innovation
0.2
New business models
0.2
0.2
Incremental innovation
Target
growth
1.7
Total value of green box
The innovation commitment
The innovation commitment
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
Dive deeper
Aspire
Choose
Discover
Evolve
Accelerate
Scale
Extend
Mobilize
Mobilize
Mobilize: Ensure your people are motivated, rewarded, and organized to innovate repeatedly
Extend
Extend: Win by creating and capitalizing on external networks
Scale
Scale: Launch innovations at the right scale in the relevant markets and segments
Accelerate
Accelerate: Beat the competition by developing and launching innovations quickly and effectively
Evolve
Evolve: Create new business models that provide defensible, robust, and scalable profit sources
Discover
Discover: Have actionable and differentiated business, market, and technology insights that translate into winning value propositions
Choose
Choose: Invest in a coherent, time- and
risk-balanced portfolio of initiatives with sufficient resources to win
Aspire
Aspire: Regard innovation-led growth as absolutely critical and set cascaded targets to reflect this
The eight essentials of innovation
Mobilize
Extend
Scale
Accelerate
Evolve
Discover
Choose
Aspire