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October 4, 2017
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Why Companies Must Align Innovation Strategy with Business Strategy

Pursuing innovation has intensified greatly in recent years across multiple industries, including health care, especially as promising digital solutions have proliferated.  Unfortunately, as pointed out by Tendayi Viki in this Fortune article, too often companies pour money into innovation efforts but do so outside of a clear business strategy, getting paltry outcomes as a result.

We have seen this play out among our health care clients.  Telehealth, predictive analytics, remote monitoring…the list of new ways to enhance access, affordability and quality is exciting but also daunting to traditional health care companies. Frequently, we see what appears to be random, disconnected efforts to pursue these innovations. On the one hand, this approach seems promising as health care companies are trying to leverage grass-roots efforts by their front-line staff.  But, as Viki mentions in his article, without a clear incorporation of how innovation efforts specifically fit into achieving overall business strategic goals, many of these efforts are poorly understood, supported and funded.  Thereby, diminishing their impact.

Where we have seen greater success is when a clear business vision has been established with investments in specific, promising types of innovation playing a specific role in achieving measurable results.  In this way, a portfolio of innovation investments/projects can be properly funded, managed, and their success measured.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tendayiviki/2017/06/12/why-companies-must-align-innovation-strategy-with-business-strategy/#4945dd6544a5