Check Your Edge Method 1: Plot Your Portfolio
Our strategy organization at Deloitte has a simple but powerful framework that positions innovation as a portfolio of efforts aligned with business strategy and risk profiles.143 This portfolio is categorized by three curves: core, which reflects improvement on existing things; adjacent, which focuses on expanding into nearby spaces; and transformational, which addresses opportunities yet to be discovered. Both adjacent and transformational zones represent edges to explore, with increasing breakthrough potential as the range extends further from the status quo.
So, for instance, if a shoe company invents a new kind of sole, or a more efficient or differentiated way to manufacture their shoe (e.g., 3D printing), that is considered core innovation. If that company begins selling athletic attire and related accessories, that's considered adjacent innovation. If that company then creates an activity tracker and related system to collect data and gamify fitness and health, that's thought of as transformational innovation.
The framework suggests that your efforts should be strategically allocated across the three categories to ...
Get The Breakthrough Manifesto now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
