Top 10 Vijay Govindarajan Insights – World Innovation Forum

Taking a slightly different approach than other World Innovation Forum bloggers, I’ve distilled 90 minutes with Vijay Govindarajan down into these Top 10 Insights:

1. Most companies spend too much time on Box 1 thinking and not enough on Box 2&3 thinking
• Box 1 is about closing the performance gap and restructuring
• Box 2&3 are about Closing the Opportunity Gap (projects for 2020) and Renewal
2. Strategic Intent is about dreaming big (other people call this a BHAG) – not creating a mission statement that nobody reads
3. Every company needs a growth playbook for three horizons:
• Horizon 1 – Core Business
• Horizon 2 – Adjacent Space

Horizon 3 – Entirely New Space

4. Horizon 3 projects are 95% assumptions and Horizon 1 projects are 95% knowledge
5. People at the top “Think” – People in the middle “Make Sure” – People at the Bottom – “Do” – If you want transformation – You must engage the “Doers” at the bottom
6. Huge entry barriers to keep competitors out can also prevent you from getting out of the fortress you’ve built when it’s disrupted
7. Because the message is simple – It does not mean that it is easy to do – The future is now
8. India and China went from 55% of World GDP to less than 5% because they missed several productivity revolutions
9. Innovation in emerging markets coming to USA will be hard for American companies to compete against because low margins won’t be attractive
10. Be the change you want to see in the company – If you get fired for it, find a new company

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a link to a Vijay Govindarajan webinar (Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators) where you can listen to a lot of the content and follow along with many of the slides.

Updated May 24, 2009 – Here are the slides from Vijay Govindarajan’s presentation at the World Innovation Forum:

What do you think?

Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)