Let's take an organization that has realized at the board and executive level that it needs greater diversity on its staff. This might be in response to outside demands, to changes in regulations, as a settlement to a suit, as a response to changing demographics, or simply by a change in the organization's own awareness. Organizations often look on such a need as a single demand, such as a demand for a change in hiring policies. Making a wide array of responses to a problem gives the organization full contact with it, and draws the organization into full understanding of the problem. Most importantly, it creates a wide array of options, giving the organization the possibility of a flexible response that changes and shifts as conditions change.
New technology provides another example.
You can change the nature of the new technology question by creating a number of touch points. Invite in other vendors to give presentations and proffer proposals. Set up study teams to search for and evaluate new technologies. Study the existing technological system into which these new technologies have to fit. Begin a board discussion of the capital needed for technological expansion and renovation, and the implications of those capital needs in terms of possible partnerships, alliances, mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic moves.