Module 1
Innovation Strategy and Strategic Intent
- Why organisations innovate
- Innovation ambition and strategic fit
- Opportunity spaces and growth themes
- Innovation principles and boundaries
Innovation Strategy Programme
Innovation Strategy and Portfolio Management
Build an innovation system that connects strategic intent, opportunity discovery, experimentation, portfolio choices and disciplined scaling.
Course overview
Turn innovation from scattered ideas into a strategic portfolio of evidence-based choices.
Innovation creates value when organisations focus attention on the right opportunity spaces, run disciplined experiments, allocate resources deliberately and scale only when evidence supports further commitment.
This course develops a strategic approach to innovation management. Participants connect innovation ambition with strategic priorities, opportunity discovery, portfolio horizons, experiment design, governance, learning and value evidence.
The programme balances creativity with discipline. It helps leaders create enough freedom for exploration while maintaining explicit decision criteria, ownership, risk boundaries and stop-or-scale decisions.
Learning outcomes
What participants will be able to do.
By the end of the course, participants should be able to:
- Define the strategic purpose and boundaries of innovation for an organisation.
- Identify and frame opportunity spaces using customer, technology and market evidence.
- Differentiate incremental, adjacent and transformational innovation horizons.
- Design an innovation portfolio that balances risk, time horizon and strategic relevance.
- Translate ideas into testable assumptions and proportionate experiments.
- Establish innovation governance, funding stages and decision criteria.
- Evaluate scale readiness using evidence of desirability, feasibility, viability and organisational readiness.
- Use portfolio reviews to continue, pivot, combine, scale or stop innovation initiatives.
Who should attend
Designed for professionals who influence strategic choices or execution.
- Executives and senior managers sponsoring innovation.
- Innovation, product and R&D leaders.
- Strategy, transformation and corporate-development professionals.
- Portfolio and PMO professionals governing innovation initiatives.
Prerequisites
Professionally accessible and application-focused.
Participants should have professional or management experience. No formal innovation-method qualification is required.
Course structure
A five-module strategic learning journey.
The sequence develops understanding, application and practical outputs progressively across five connected modules.
Module 2
Opportunity Discovery and Portfolio Horizons
- Customer, market and technology signals
- Problem and opportunity framing
- Core, adjacent and transformational horizons
- Portfolio balance and resource choices
Module 3
Experiments and Evidence
- Assumptions and hypotheses
- Experiment design and learning objectives
- Minimum evidence and decision criteria
- Bias, failure and learning discipline
Module 4
Innovation Governance and Funding
- Stage-based funding
- Roles and decision rights
- Risk boundaries and responsible innovation
- Portfolio reviews and escalation
Module 5
Scale, Value and Portfolio Renewal
- Scale-readiness criteria
- Capability and operating-model implications
- Innovation value measures
- Continue, pivot, scale, combine or stop
Learning experience
Learn by analysing, applying, challenging and producing.
Understand
Clarify the strategic logic
Innovation opportunity and portfolio workshops.
Apply
Practise with evidence and cases
Hypothesis and experiment-design exercises.
Produce
Create practical outputs
Innovation-governance and funding simulations.
Challenge
Test assumptions and trade-offs
Scale-readiness assessment.
Transfer
Connect learning to work
Application to a real innovation theme or portfolio.
Completion requirements
Complete the applied learning journey.
- Participate in opportunity, portfolio and experiment exercises.
- Develop an innovation hypothesis and evidence plan.
- Complete governance and scale-readiness activities.
- Produce a final innovation portfolio recommendation.
Participant outputs
Leave with practical strategic-management artefacts.
- Innovation intent and opportunity map.
- Innovation portfolio horizon view.
- Experiment and evidence plan.
- Innovation governance and decision-gate model.
- Scale-readiness and portfolio-review scorecard.
Delivery options
Choose the format that fits your people and operating environment.
Instructor-led
Live Classroom
Face-to-face delivery with facilitated discussion, strategic cases, workshops, practical tools and immediate feedback.
Instructor-led
Live Virtual Classroom
Interactive online delivery using collaborative workspaces, breakout activities, coached practice and guided application.
Flexible
Blended Learning
A structured combination of preparation, live sessions, applied assignments, workplace tools and follow-up.
Organisation-specific
Corporate and In-Company
Tailored delivery using organisational terminology, strategic priorities, industry context, decision processes and anonymised cases where appropriate.
Frequently asked questions
Course information and participation.
Is this a design-thinking course?
Design thinking may support opportunity discovery, but the course is broader and focuses on innovation strategy, portfolio choices, experimentation, governance and scaling.
Is it suitable for R&D teams?
Yes. The principles can be applied to product, service, process, business-model and technology innovation, including R&D portfolios.
Does the course promote 'fail fast'?
It promotes disciplined learning. Experiments should be designed to reduce uncertainty and support decisions, not to celebrate failure without useful evidence.
Can we use our innovation pipeline?
Yes. Corporate delivery can work with your innovation themes, pipeline, funding stages and governance process.
Does completion provide a professional certification?
The course may provide an INDENTRA completion record where applicable. No external innovation certification is implied.
Take the next step
Build an innovation portfolio that learns quickly and invests selectively.
Discuss a programme aligned with your innovation strategy, growth themes, portfolio and governance model.