The 2023 Business Growth Strategies for Digital Innovation Leaders
Why the Design Mind Is a Unique Advantage in Business — And How to Harness Its Power to Fulfill the CEO’s Agenda
How do you design for loyalty at the speed of consumer expectation? Or collapse the distance between brand and consumer for a seamless, integrated experience? How will you leverage the right business growth strategies to exceed business growth expectations — not just once, but continually?
And all within a competitive digital landscape?
When harnessed correctly, human-centered design serves as the springboard for answering these questions. When HCD is combined with business thinking, digital business leaders can unlock outsized value and create breakthrough offerings.
Doing so involves the right business growth strategies, informed by the right combination of design and business thinking. This convergence will be necessary for succeeding against what IA Collaborative has identified as the Three Pervasive CEO Initiatives for 2023.
In this series we will explore each of the three 2023 priorities, along with examples and ready-to-use tools for you to begin framing each initiative at your organization.
The Three Pervasive CEO Initiatives for 2023
By understanding the CEO’s agenda and how you as a digital executive are essential to its success, you can elevate your influence and create positive change for customers, organizations, communities, and society.
YOUR ORGANIZATION NEEDS YOU TO SUCCEED. YOU NEED THE RIGHT BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
Every CEO has one primary goal: Growth. More specifically, growth beyond shareholder expectations. Achieving this evergreen objective is challenging to say the least. It requires the creation, delivery and capture of unforeseen value in a competitive digital landscape. It requires innovation—and it requires you as a digital business leader to succeed.
Success might look like advanced, adaptive customer experiences; new pathways for recurring revenue; or more effective methods to move from live-prototypes to in-market innovation.
Regardless of specific execution, the common theme among successful growth stories is anticipating customers’ needs and bringing those needs to life through novel, differentiated offerings.
ACHIEVING SUCCESS AS A DIGITAL INNOVATION LEADER
As a digital executive, you are uniquely positioned to deliver this type of unanticipated growth. You sit at the intersection of human-centered design and business strategy. By strategically converging these two skill sets, you and your team can consistently identify opportunities, create winning strategies, design differentiated experiences, and launch profitable new offerings.
HERE’S HOW: THE FOUR DECISIONS OF GROWTH
At IA Collaborative, we leverage our Four Decisions of Growth™ Methodology, which combines design + business thinking into a proven series of actionable methods that empower business leaders and digital executives.
To achieve near-term objectives AND deliver superior long-term returns, CEOs must continuously make four critical growth decisions. These decisions require leadership of digital executives who converge design and business processes to drive results.
Each Decision of Growth is defined by:
A combination of business growth strategies + human-centered design strategies. The methodology moves from the most broad considerations (“What new markets do we enter as an organization?”) to the most specific (“When and where do I allocate capital?”).
The decisions of growth make up questions all growth leaders will have to address:
- Decision 1: Where to Play
- Decision 2: How to Win
- Decision 3: What to Build
- Decision 4: When to Fund
“Growth strategies that combine both a traditional business framework and a design mind have the greatest chance of unlocking outsized value in increasingly complex business environments.”
— Dan Kraemer, Co-Founder + Co-CEO @ IA Collaborative
The Four Decisions of Growth combine human-centered design with the right business growth strategies to offer practitioners a way to confidently and quickly place strategic bets on future options, better serve their users, and enable new business growth.
The Takeaway
The Four Decisions of Growth enables innovators to define the methods, questions, and outputs on which they must align within each stage and provides the tactical framework for success.
WHAT THE FOUR DECISIONS OF GROWTH MEAN IN 2023
Returning to the Pervasive CEO Initiatives for 2023: In short, the Four Decisions of Growth methodology provide the “how” framework to address the “what” of the Pervasive CEO Initiatives:
Applying the right tactics from the Four Decisions of Growth methodology empowers you to drive growth in the three key initiatives related to digital innovation:
To make smart growth decisions, executives need differentiated insights and ideas. The Four Decisions of Growth methodology presents digital innovation leaders with 16 essential outputs, each aimed at filling essential knowledge gaps, generating attractive options, and aligning teams toward optimal decisions.
In this article series, we draw upon discrete outputs from IA Collaborative’s Four Decisions of Growth methodology. For “Initiative #1: Forming Direct Customer Relationships,” we begin with “Insights Formation.”
For “Initiative #2: Generating New Recurring Revenue,” we explore the creation of human-centered “Business Models.”
In “Initiative #3: Accelerating In-Market Innovation,” we will plan to test a “Business Prototype.”
To determine the best business growth strategies, leaders need differentiated information and ideas. For each growth decision in this methodology, you will generate key outputs designed to produce unique insights, generate valuable options, and ultimately drive alignment on optimal decisions. To aid you in achieving each of the Three Pervasive CEO Initiatives for 2023, focus on just three of those outputs:
To aid you in Initiative #1
To aid you in Initiative #2
To aid you in Initiative #3
With the 2023 CEO initiatives highlighting the path forward, and these selected Four Decisions of Growth outputs serving as a starting point, you can develop strategies that will achieve your organization’s near-term objectives while setting the foundation for superior long-term results.
READ ON FOR
INITIATIVE 01: BUILD MORE DIRECT RELATIONSHIPS →
Want to Know More?
We help you harness the Four Decisions of Growth to confidently expand your business.
ABOUT IA COLLABORATIVE
IA Collaborative has lifted from 20+ years of insights from high-impact engagements with leading brands to highlight how the right application of design thinking will be essential to business growth in 2023.
We fully integrate human-centered design and business strategy, helping our client partners, from Insight to Action, in driving continuous innovation. We work with the world’s most successful brands, including FedEx, Allstate, Airbnb, Fidelity, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Lilly, and Audi.
Ready to work at the forefront of design? CONTACT US.
