Business Strategy Innovation Diamond (BSID)

Continuing my quest to surface some classics that the Innovation Excellence audience will have never seen, here is another from 2007:

I would like to introduce a visual metaphor that the consultants use at Business Strategy Innovation. It’s called, predictably enough, the Business Strategy Innovation Diamond, or the BSID. There is another reason we use it, to “ID” the “BS” in an organization. Now a lot of people would represent strategy as the top of a pyramid, processes in the middle, and systems as the base of a pyramid, but that ignores two of the most important tools in any organization – policies and reporting. Business Strategy Innovation instead starts with a diamond that looks like this:

Here is an example of how the Business Strategy Innovation Diamond can help you structure an organizational analysis project:

1. Strategy
   • We want to be the leading Internet retailer

2. Policy
   • Free shipping on orders over $25

3. Processes
   • Create marketing program to promote this benefit

4. Systems
   • Modify shopping cart application
   • Build on-page messaging to alert customers of additional purchase $$$ required to reach the $25 threshold for free shipping

5. Reporting
   • Establish any infrastructure required to measure orders above/below $25
   • Measure benchmark period
   • Create report measuring % of orders greater than $25 in current period versus benchmark period to measure effect

The BSID focuses your organization on making sure that the policies support the strategy, that the processes facilitate the policies, that the systems enable the processes, and the reporting measures the execution of the strategy. Not focusing on the BSID, may result in just BS instead of strategic innovation.

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Braden Kelley is a Social Business Architect and the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons. Braden is also a popular innovation speaker and trainer, and advises companies on embedding innovation across the organization and how to attract and engage customers, partners, and employees.

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