Technology strategy for a global beverages company

Recently completed a project to help a global drinks manufacturer to craft their technology strategy.  My role was to coach the Technical Director as we thought through issues such as

• the appetite for innovation leadership versus technology risk,
• core objectives balancing growth, cost management and sustainability agendas,
• the role of technology ‘platforms’ as a unifying logic for managing resources and capabilities, from technology scouting all the way through to implementation
• building portfolios of technology capability to deliver the objectives and showing how this would be sequenced
• balancing the pipeline to build and maintain the right mix of exploration and of exploitation of technologies (and using the pipeline to communicate the balance of the portfolios)
• identifying training needs in both technical disciplines and innovation skills
• choosing KPIs for both managing processes and outcomes

 

My client handled the interfaces to the rest of the organisation and has set up the processes for his scanning and identification of candidate technologies.  Therefore our work together focused on making the underlying logic robust and communicating intent and strategy as clearly as possible.

 

This is the third time I’ve worked with this individual in this way and I think this was our best outcome yet.

Interesting projects from the last few years

The following gives a flavour of my recent work:

 

• Taught business model innovation on the MSc (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) at SKEMA, the French business school (www.skema.edu/programs/masters-of-science/msc-entrepreneurship-and-innovation-for-a-sustainable-world-testimonials)

 

• Explored innovation opportunities in mobile cloud computing

 

• Innovation and the UK railway industry: worked with ADL, identifying blocks to innovation across the railway industry and proposing mechanisms to overcome them (content.yudu.com/A1sf2g/RPJun11/resources/29.htm), then helped with early contributions to the safety, standards and innovation strand of the McNulty report and finally created an ‘industry maturity model of innovation’ which has since been used in a number of ways as an explanatory or diagnostic framework.

 

• Contributed to the development and testing of Richard Webb’s Innovation Capability Assessment tool (www.stepout.biz/innovation.htm) including an assessment of the practices and culture in operating theatre management at an NHS Trust hospital, and recommended improvement options

 

• Facilitated workshops to explore scenarios for energy management in buildings on a 20-40 year timeframe (www-csd.eng.cam.ac.uk/themes0/energy-demand/energy)

 

• Helped Cambridge University’s Engineering Department to establish a research theme to explore ways of maximising the speed and effectiveness with which their research is transferred into pragmatic value and use in industry (www.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/themes/view/9)

 

• Helped a senior team in the Research Councils to explore and prioritise options for funding large-scale experimental facilities

 

• Facilitated boards of companies in high hazard industries in their consideration of process safety and the implications for their organisations, working alongside domain specialists from IChemE, (www.icheme.org/~/Media/Documents/Shop/Courses/Process_safety_and_the_boardleaflet.pdf)

 

• Facilitated a board’s off-site strategy session, developing with them a systems diagram of their operations and environment, in order to highlight cross-functional dependencies, synergies and opportunities. Helped them to prioritise initiatives and actions for the annual planning cycle.  Subsequently facilitated a middle-management off-site sessions using the same systems diagram to illustrate functions’ interdependencies and to explore how the middle managers could collaborate more effectively.  Developed alignment at different levels in the organisation through an explicitly co-constructed and shared view of their world.

 

• Worked with a small team in a global aerospace company to explore the significance of and the strategic imperatives for one of their core technologies, identifying key actions, critical timescales and the implications of timely action.  We swiftly built a consensus about priorities and how recommended initiatives might play out across the different divisions of the company and presented these to the board member responsible and the key stakeholders.

Projects past and project in progress

This blog acts as a dynamic repository to describe what I’m working on and some of the emerging insights.  Obviously the confidential or competitively significant aspects don’t appear, but I’ll share what I can.

 

Watch this space!