Our approach to innovation generates actionable, scalable outcomes.
We don’t deploy teams of experts to “do strategy” for our clients. Instead, we work side-by-side to empower teams with a clear vision, a robust set of options to grow in new ways, and the capabilities needed to deliver ongoing results.
Resilient growth strategy requires foresight, insight, and action.
Foresight
What are the forces, technologies, disruptions, and plausible futures impacting your industry? Why do they matter and what can be done? We help organizations makes sense of it all and uncover fresh insights that inform strategy.
Insight
With a clear understanding of the future, we then can define what to do about it. We draw upon a rigorous methodology and vast network across many disciplines to generate breakthrough ideas that lead to outcomes.
Action
We work together to turn a broad set of ideas into a focused portfolio of real opportunities. We then help design and initiate plans for development, validate assumptions and uncertainties, and scale for sustained success.
This approach is our core offering. We call it FastPath.
Work on the
Right Things
Speed Up and
Lower Costs
Create a Learning
Environment
Fit For Purpose
Resourcing
Traditional approaches often have long and inflexible development cycles, a resistance to prototyping and iteration, and high capital requirements.
vs.
FastPath is designed to dramatically decrease cycle times, balance flexibility with rigor, and efficiently allocate resources to the right opportunities.
Perspective
“Every company must find a way to approach the kind of transformative, disruptive innovation needed. It requires an entirely new mindset led by a courageous and bold vision. Allow people to explore, experiment, and learn without knowing the outcomes to create the future growth for the company.”
Peter Bryant, Board Chair & Managing Director, Clareo
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We help assess where the culture is today, and determine the plans to become “fit to innovate.”
Results are not sustainable without the right mindset, capabilities, and support for innovation. The skills required to be successful can be taught. We equip clients with insights and methodology to close the gap between where they are today and where they need to be in order to be successful.
Assessment
Do you have the right leadership, culture, processes, and capabilities in place to enable an innovative culture? We establish a baseline to determine your organization’s “innovation muscle.”
Mindset
Do employees believe that innovation is possible in their organization and that it is relevant for them? We train leaders to exhibit the mindset needed to achieve their objectives.
Methodology
Do the processes you have in place produce a predictable flow of results? We help create systematic ways to engage the organization on the journey and create environments for ideas to flourish.
Metrics
Do you have clear metrics in place to know how you're doing and make adjustments as needed? We help companies determine what to measure, how to measure it, and then implement strategies to improve over time.
Client Story
"Clareo earned our trust over the years by combining leading academic thinking and a powerful global network, with practical approaches that ensure results and buy-in. They know our business and know how to get things done.”
Jim Weaver, Former Vice President and Managing Director
“Aspirations for growth and innovation must be combined with a culture that is designed to deliver results. There must be key elements such as a clear vision, openness to new thinking, paths of engagement for employees, comfort with ambiguity, and an entrepreneurial mindset applied to execution. This is hard to do, but powerful when companies get it right.”
- Paul Donnellan, Managing Director, Clareo
The right culture and portfolio of opportunities will only get you so far.
For sustainable innovation, the right systems need to be in place. We help organizations develop a structure for ongoing innovation success.
Organize to Drive New Business Innovation
Getting buy-in across your organization requires a clear understanding of objectives and the various corporate entrepreneurship models that will work best. What’s the mandate, why are we innovating, and what do we hope to get out of it? Defining short, mid, and long-term objectives is critical to supporting ongoing innovation efforts.
Structure the Team, Funding, and Governance
Who should own innovation? Is it assigned to a corporate group or business unit? Is it a function of technology, strategy, or perhaps marketing? How is it funded? For ongoing innovation to be successful, we must define what is appropriate for your organization.
Bring the Outside In through External Venturing
We help organizations identify the right set of focus areas, investment strategies and vehicles, and the mechanism to continually scout, source, and invest in an external innovation ecosystem, including startups. We also facilitate setting up relationships with the right communities.
Engage Key Stakeholders
Collaboration is a key ingredient to be successful in your innovation efforts. Who needs to be involved? How do you keep the right people involved and supportive? We assist clients throughout the journey to ensure change is managed effectively so initiatives are can thrive.
Perspective
“Incumbents everywhere are under threat of technology and business model disruption. Speed is the new competitive basis of competition, and the rules of the game have totally changed. In this environment, corporations can no longer drive innovation only from within; innovation must be also outside-in, to an even greater degree than ever before. Leaders must design ecosystem strategies and create the right external venturing structure to accelerate innovation and growth.”
Scott Bowman, Managing Director & Board Member, Clareo
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We actively pursue ways to partner with our clients and with trusted organizations to make a positive impact in the world.
We led the development and implementation of "Measured & Managed Innovation" - a multi-year effort to assess the current state of over 100 companies in the five Nordic countries using our Innovation Radar diagnostic. With the results of the diagnostic, we were able to identify specific areas to enhance innovation capability and improve competitiveness of participating companies.
We worked with a passionate founder to help set up the organization structure and model for Partners in Compassionate Care (PCC), which has built a hospital and network of clinics in South Sudan—the world’s newest country—and served over 120,000 people over the past 10 years. We have also partnered with Tivity Health (Clareo client) and Health eVillages to deliver iPad-based health information technology and medical content to empower community health workers and improve health outcomes in South Sudan.
We helped develop the venture innovation, investment strategy and operating model for Riyadh Valley Company—a Saudi Arabian special purpose sovereign fund focused on helping advance economic competitiveness and support the evolution from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. Through research, venture ecosystem mapping, an experiential Insight Tour and strategy development, we helped them develop the model around three focus areas: renewables and sustainable resources (solar, energy conservation, water related solutions), healthcare (diabetes, obesity & cardiovascular), and information & communications technology (mobile, social, content).
We're working through the KIN (now The World Innovation Network - "TWIN") to partner with leading mining and resources firms to transform the future of the industry by shifting the focus from resource extraction to development, partnership, and investment in communities where resource companies are building mines.