Driving Strategic Innovation (DSI)

Which business innovation strategy will accelerate change?

Do you worry about being left behind as technology changes the way you work? The right innovation strategy gets you to market faster and grows your profits.

Driving Strategic Innovation is a powerful alliance between IMD and MIT Sloan. Designed to change the way you think about innovation and technology strategy, it gives you a better toolbox for new solutions and business model innovation.

You explore your own approach and style to innovation and leave with a roadmap which supports your company’s strategic goals and accelerates change.

• Successfully manage the (often unclear) front-end of the innovation process & navigate increasingly unpredictable value chains
• Foster innovative ideas, practice rapid prototyping and engage in business model innovation
• Achieve a more innovative organizational culture and become an effective leader of innovation

Change the way you think about technology and innovation strategy

Driving Strategic Innovation changes the way you think about technology and innovation strategy. The program brings together innovation, marketing, business model opportunities, value-chain design, project execution and talent management in an end-to-end roadmap so you can achieve breakthrough performance. You also learn how to build the right relationships that facilitate knowledge transfer, both within your business and across the value chain.

Explore your individual style and approach to innovation

During the week you will think holistically about innovation and explore your individual style and approach. You combine idea development with action learning. You ideate new solutions to your business problems, develop these ideas with rapid prototyping and finally learn how to pitch your ideas in the context of the optimal business models. You strengthen your ability to think and act decisively.

Program themes

• Incremental and discontinuous innovation are not opposites, they are partners
• We love our customers, but we are always out of equilibrium with them
• We might serve our customers better by talking with people who are not our customers, and never will be
• Good ideas do not just rely on experts, they require non-experts as well
• Innovation thrives when ambiguity is both reduced and enlarged
• Creating value is not the same as capturing value
• Wide-ranging creativity requires discipline
• Bottom-up entrepreneurial innovation thrives under strong, self-confident, top-down leaders

Let your peers teach you too

Throughout the whole program, you take part in wide-ranging and challenging discussions, intensive group projects and live case studies. The program design gives ample opportunities for rich interaction with faculty and among peers. Alumni of the program form a network of innovation thinkers who continue to exchange ideas long after the program ends.