About This Course
The Innovation Strategy course helps you design how your organisation will create the next wave of value – not just this quarter, but over the next 2–5 years.
You will learn how to link innovation to strategy, choose focus areas, manage a portfolio of initiatives, and run disciplined experiments. By the end, you’ll have a practical playbook for taking ideas from concept to validated bets, and for deciding what to stop, start or scale.
Syllabus Overview
Module 1
Innovation Foundations & Direction
- Why Innovate – disruption, competition, customer expectations, cost of “no change”
- Types of Innovation – product, service, process, business model, ecosystem
- Horizon Thinking – core, adjacent and transformational innovation (concepts)
- Strategic Themes – linking innovation to company vision and strategy
- Problem & Opportunity Spaces – where to play and what to ignore (for now)
- Exercise: Define 2–3 strategic innovation themes for your context
Module 2
Portfolios, Pipelines & Business Models
- Innovation Portfolios – balancing risk, return, time horizons and capacity
- Idea to Initiative – funnels, stages and simple governance gates
- Prioritisation – impact vs effort, strategic fit, risk and learning potential
- Business Models – value proposition, customer segments, revenue & cost basics
- Lean Business Cases – framing assumptions instead of long documents
- Exercise: Map a small innovation portfolio and prioritise a few key bets
Module 3
Experiments, Scaling & Governance
- From Idea to Experiment – hypotheses, testable questions, success criteria
- Lean Experiments – prototypes, pilots, A/B tests and staged investments
- Metrics & Innovation Accounting – learning metrics vs vanity metrics
- Scaling What Works – integration with core, change management, hand‑offs
- Governance & Culture – roles, decision forums, incentives, storytelling
- Exercise: Design an experiment card for one innovation initiative
*Examples are adapted based on learners’ industries (IT & digital, banking, manufacturing, services, startups, public sector, etc.).
Practice
Canvases, Cases & Innovation Playbook
- Innovation canvases – opportunity, experiment, and simple portfolio views
- Case study: reshaping an innovation portfolio to fit strategy and capacity
- Creating your personal “Innovation Strategy Playbook”
