We've been talking about strategy formulation and
I've introduced the idea that while it can be important for an organization to
formally set aside time to engage in some strategic analysis and planning.
Oftentimes in organizations what happens is that activity just gets tied to and
connected to the annual budgeting cycle.
And if you do that it can be a problem because you short-change the opportunity
you have to really engage in some deep strategic analysis and planning.
Instead it might just evolved into bickering in the organization and
a fight for organizational resources for next year.
So I've begun to offer some alternatives to kind of the formal strategic planning
process that might be typical in organizations.
I talk briefly about the strategic war room.
I want to introduce a second idea that you might think about, and
that is this idea of rapid prototyping.
So this isn't a military analogy like the strategic war room.
This is a concept that actually comes from the manufacturing and fabrication space.
So it's kind of a design, build idea and
if you're in the manufacturing business the whole point of rapid prototyping
is to sort of quickly mock up some sort of a scale model or
a prototype that you can begin to play with, and look at, and analyze.
To start to get an idea of what the potential shortcomings are, or problems or
things that you might not have anticipated when you designed the thing
on the computer screen or on paper.
And, you know, there are lots of examples of this in the design and build world.
So, you know, at Apple, for instance.
Every time they get ready to design a new version of the iPhone,
their chief designer, Jony Ive is famous for mocking up a prototype.
Of course, there's a lot of focus in that company on the technological advancements
and what capabilities in the tech are going to be new, and
can we improve the optics of the camera and stuff like that.
But Jony Ive was famous for mocking up a physical prototype that he can carry
around in his pocket for a couple of weeks at a time because they also
want to make sure they get the size and the dimensions and form factor just right.
So that's the idea is that you have sort of try things out little bit and
that might reveal some things about that product that you're getting ready to
manufacture.
So that's the analogy from the design, build manufacturing world.
How do we apply this to business strategy, to organizational strategy.
Well, the idea here is to encourage a different kind of thinking.
And how we do that is by quickly engaging in sort of pilot tests and experiments.
Again, trying some things quickly so
that we can learn something from those experiences.
So what we also want to facilitate is rapid failures, right?
We want to be able to quickly determine what works and what doesn't.
So, long before we sort of set and then begin to
implement a large scale strategic change in the organization, for example.
The idea here in rapid prototyping is that we might try it first.
Let's try it first in a division of the company or
in a specific product market or something.
And let's sort of roll it out there and
let's see what we can learn from that, right.
So this is the idea.
And it's used in a variety of settings.
Not just in manufacturing.
So it's used for instance in instructional design and it's also used in
corporate initiatives and that's sort of what I'm talking about here.
Is you know if you take this rapid prototyping approach the you know
the point is to sort of you know, try to get a quick idea of kind of what works and
what doesn't and flush things out,
try some stuff, allow somethings to fail so you can tweak and adjust.
And we aren't just applying that that our products or
services like we would if we were a manufacturer,
but here we're applying it to the entire organizations strategy.
We want to sort of try some things, see what works, see what doesn't, and
go from there.
So that's rapid prototyping when it comes to business strategy.
Michael LenoxSenior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer
Jared HarrisSamuel L. Slover Research Chair in Business Administration
Scott SnellE. Thayer Bigelow Research Professor in Business Administration
