It is proactive, voluntary and endogenous change rather than reacting or anticipating exogenous shocks, such as competitors’ initiatives, global warming et cetera.
Strategic innovation can also be defined as a constructive initiative, in which the basic assumptions (such as e.g. what value, to whom, how), bottlenecks and the industry boundaries are redefined, instead of taking the existing structures of business as given. From this perspective strategic innovation always contains the potential to change the industry, and strategic innovations can also be referred to as industry-changing innovations. It is essential to understand that an industry is a mental construction: an industry depends on how we define a business.
Depending on the context, these fundament-challenging innovations have been called strategic innovations (Markides 1997, 1999, Govindarajan & Gupta 2001, Govindarajan & Trimble 2005), ‘finding new market space’ and Blue ocean strategy (Kim & Mauborgne 1999, 2004, 2005a,b), driving markets vs. market-driven (Driving the markets – Jaworski et al 2000), revolutionary strategy (Hamel 1996), value reconfiguration (Normann 2001) as well as industry-changing innovations (Tekes Liito-ohjelma) et cetera.
Identifying the potential for a strategic innovation – and especially realizing that potential – typically requires changes in the tangible and intangible features of the offering, as well as in management and organization practices. MIND has strong know-how of all these essential dimensions.