Innovation Strategy and Delivery What separates the best from the rest? A world-class innovation system that is strategy-led, internally consistent, and adaptable enough to drive serial success through an ongoing innovation journey. Innovation is essential. Nearly 75% of companies say innovation is one of their top three management priorities, and 35% rank it above all others. That’s not surprising. After all, a winning innovation strategy—paired with the right innovation system—can make a big difference. Since 2005, the businesses in BCG’s annual ranking of the world’s 50 most innovative companies have delivered a total shareholder return two percentage points higher than that of the global market. But innovation is hard. Only about 30% of companies think they are good at it. And it’s only getting more challenging. Digital and data are requiring even the strongest innovators to continually master new capabilities and develop faster and more agile research and development processes. The BCG Innovation Journey Avoiding these pitfalls calls for an approach that is strategy-led, biased toward action, and agile. These characteristics are true whether you’re talking about innovation in consumer products or in a business-to-business domain—or innovating at the level of the product, service, or business model. And they’re at the heart of BCG’s approach to innovation consulting. BCG’s innovation journey is a holistic approach in which we collaborate closely with the client to strengthen its innovation system and make innovation happen. The approach has four central elements. INNOVATION STRATEGY We begin by looking both outside and inside to define an innovation strategy that best supports the overall business strategy. Outside to understand key trends shaping customer economics and demand and to prioritize the most attractive domains for innovation investment. And inside to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the client’s innovation system. The strategy enables the innovation system to gain traction by pinpointing the most important areas for investment. Supporting expertise and offerings: The i2i by BCG benchmarking tool assesses a client’s innovation system on ten dimensions critical to success. BCG's Center for Growth and Innovation Analytics mines vast troves of unstructured data to spot tomorrow’s opportunities. BCG's Center for Sensing and Mining the Future tracks more than 90 megatrends that will shape customer demand. INNOVATION SPRINTS A great innovation strategy is necessary but not sufficient. Creating value in a world of shortening product and business model life cycles requires decisive action—and speed. We work with clients in a sprint-based approach to develop and launch minimum viable products consistent with the strategy. Offerings are evolved in this “test and learn” approach—and the less successful ones are dropped to free up resources for other projects. Supporting expertise and offerings: Ideation. Our “thinking in new boxes” creativity approach opens eyes to unexpected possibilities. Business Model Innovation can be a critical enabler and multiplier of competitive advantage. Innovation Sprints. Our specialty business BCG Digital Ventures can help jump-start a new direction. BUSINESS BUILD AND SCALE-UP Maximizing the return on innovation investments requires the ability to find product-market fit and scale the most promising projects fast. We work closely with clients to help them make the transition from experimentation to execution of a new product, service, or business model. Supporting expertise and offerings: Our Build Operate Transfer offering accelerates impact. Our New Business Build offering delivers a portfolio of new growth and impact opportunities. INNOVATION ENABLEMENT Increasingly, innovation success calls for the ability to continually build new innovation muscles—or to bring in new skills and capabilities from outside. We help organizations identify the critical capabilities needed and define the best path to obtain them, whether through corporate venturing, partnership, acquisition, or internal development. Supporting expertise and offerings: Our Corporate Venturing expertise can help clients gain access to a broader portfolio of future options. BCG's Center for Growth and Innovation Analytics can help identify partnership and acquisition candidates. Using Human-Centered Design via our specialty business BCG Platinion, we bring a hands-on approach to development and implementation. BCG's Lean R&D/Engineering Health Check identifies opportunities to enhance process efficiency. Related Innovation Services Business Model Innovation Corporate Venturing Meet Our Innovation Consultants Ramón Baeza Managing Director & Senior Partner, Global Business Leader for Disruption & Reinvention Madrid Justin Manly Managing Director & Partner Chicago David Allred DV Managing Director & Partner Digital Ventures – Seattle Charles Gildehaus Managing Director & Partner, BCG Digital Ventures Boston GET TO KNOW MORE OF OUR INNOVATION EXPERTS Learn More About Building a Winning Innovation Engine More companies say innovation is a top-three CEO priority. Many are allocating the resources to prove it. But are they prepared to deliver? Overcoming the Four Big Barriers to Innovation Success Leading innovators succeed where others fail by avoiding common traps—such as vague targets and incremental efforts that don’t scale. After the Honeymoon Ends: Making Corporate-Startup Relationships Work Collaborations between large established companies and small innovative newcomers rarely involve “and they lived happily ever after” scenarios. But the right foundation can greatly increase their chances of success. EXPLORE OUR LATEST THINKING ON INNOVATION STRATEGY Helping a Tech Company Project Its Expertise into New Innovation Domains BCG helps a client create a new life sciences business, which now makes up 20% of the company’s revenue. Read the story Other Supporting Capabilities Center for Growth and Innovation Analytics Helping clients find tomorrow's opportunities today. Agile—at Scale Implement a more nimble way of working that gets you closer to customer value and shortens time to market. B Capital Identifying and scaling transformative technologies BCG Digital Ventures Corporate Innovation & Digital Business Building BCG GAMMA Advanced Analytics & Data Science BCG OMNIA Data & Software Solutions NEXT SECTION: LATEST THINKING Read our innovation thought leadership FOLLOW US Belgium | EN © 2021 Boston Consulting Group Careers Contact Subscribe Alumni About Offices Privacy Policy Terms of Use Sitemap Boston Consulting Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity / expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state or local law, where applicable, and those with criminal histories will be considered in a manner consistent with applicable state and local laws. Innovation Strategy and Delivery OVERVIEW LATEST THINKING EXPERTS LOG IN