Architecture as Innovation: Gaining competitive advantage through improved strategy translation

Regardless of which study is referenced, the percentage of strategies that fail is staggering. As part of the presenter’s formal research at Penn State, participants from Fortune 50 to 500 companies reported common strategy implementation missteps such as not making strategy available to the organization. That is like having a dinner recipe in mind, but sending your spouse to the grocery store with no list—and hungry—and then wondering why they overspent and brought home a hodgepodge of items.

Today, more than ever, companies cannot afford not knowing if its scarce resources are moving the dial on its strategic outcomes. Yet, no company discussed by the research participants achieved the discipline, or level of sophistication, required to systematically keep their investments from diverging from the intended strategic scope. Moreover, the breakdown in strategy alignment was found to happen immediately at its “translation” (communication).

Strategies will inevitably diverge to some extent. However, the presenter asserts that companies that can architect better strategy translation are better positioned to gain competitive advantage. This could be the new innovation playing field. Not the captivating type of disruptive innovation that makes headlines; rather, simple architectural innovation with big impacts to the company bottom line.

In this session, the basic concept of a strategic control system will be explained to demonstrate why the utopian state for rich strategic insights is difficult to achieve. There also will be discussion on what the research participants disclosed as the various ways strategic divergence occurred in their organizations. Some humorous, some shocking. Attendees will take-away practical business architecture techniques—as supported by the subject research—to reduce strategy divergence in their environment.