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“[Strategy is] about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest. It’s the art of creating power.”

– Lawrence Freedman

The map is not the terrain.

The road map of economics; of politics… and of systems relationships, such as how physical geography (E.g., ’The Climate’) was supposed to work in subservience to economic conventional wisdom… or how one social group fits into the worldview of another, are likely maps charted prior to these current times of divergent turns that are often unlisted.

The terrain for coming years may be incompatible for conventions of past strategic planning methods. StratGen supports the development of Strategy Innovators and their power aims of ethical value. Strategy Innovators interface with issues of strategy, Innovation, risk, and Social Synergy with leadership skills suitable for these times.

Plans always have a role. And yet a new way of doing things that takes plenty of what still works with Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management into account — and is about coping, coordinating, and especially maneuvering, with new road mapping capabilities at hand… is likely part of the ‘new normal’. This is likely a normalcy where achieving resilience and then sustainability — where we live: in Our Municipalities — is about building new strategy platforms. And where actual transformation is often the daily baseline.

The word strategy is becoming a bit more popular. Of course, popularity and strategy are not always synonymous… and yet strategy and a term like Social Synergy — as to who and how many get behind the best, most ethical strategy available — are not at all mutually exclusive.

Interacting with strategy, innovation, risk, and Social Synergy is both art and science. The arts are familiar to StratGen. The StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 Platform (SI 2) has origins in both the arts and management science; as well as real world events like the historic Hydrogen Road Tour and Hurricane Helene.

Along with a common reference to governing like the Public Policy Cycle, one core Strategy Innovators tool StratGen shares with clients and SI 2 Lab members is the above Strategy Concept Pyramid alongside the SI 2 Power Sphere.

If purpose, mission, vision, values, and social connection seem like missing parts of the Concept of Strategy… The Way component of SI 2 fills that all out.

The SI 2 Lab is the first M2M (Municipality to Municipalities) Human Ecosystem built for Municipal Success Discovery and Action.

If strategy is a ‘jargony’ term few understand or can use to create new and renewing value (I.e., innovation) in these times of trial; then strategy is a source of failure… which is a likely scenario. There is a place for Strategic Management with its planning mode and goals, objectives, sub strategies, and action plans… action plans which need to connect to skilled project management.

If Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management are not both simple yet connected to the difference between what is complex and avoiding complications from unaddressed; then Climate Protection and therefore resilience and sustainability — where we live: in Our Municipalities — should be expected to stay elusive.

The StratGen SI 2 shared capabilities are not about one 3-5 year strategic plan that gets filed as yet another PDF.

The Cambridge Dictionary definition of strategy includes that strategy is a way of doing things. That special way of doing things is about skills, values, and organization capabilities. So, there is strategy.

The words idea and strategy have strong similarities; and so idea generation and developing strategy should have similar high-level status at the start of anyone’s strategy concept work.

In this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) era, generating both pragmatic and original confrontations of strategy, innovation, and risk can start with metaphors and analogy. Issues of Climate Protection and lack thereof are literally unprecedented. So, StratGen has an art element to the SI 2 Dynamism Flywheel.

We can use some of the practices of high level corporate and government Strategic Innovation for public good right where we live: in Our Municipalities.

Ideas and Strategy. Strategy and Ideas. The definition of idea is similar to the definition of strategy. Innovation without strategy can happen; but innovation is weaker because of that incongruence.

Humans are about strategy and ideas as much as anything else we are about.

The SI 2 Lab is an example of StratGen being part of America’s resilience and sustainability ideas marketplace.

SI 2 Dynamism is for Municipal Success

Strategy Innovators working together in the SI 2 Lab — and the Gestalt, or sum experience, of SI 2 interactions and interfaces with tools like Solution Design — is SI 2 Dynamism.

What might the byproducts of Municipal Success Discovery and Action be in the future? Because need a resilience and sustainability edge for certain; and urgently.

If you think you know what Municipal Success is, your Strategy Innovator abilities are needed. If you want to develop as a Strategy Innovator, there is a new association in development for you. The SI 2 Lab is for both knowers and learners as we establish resilience and then sustainability… right where we live: in Our Municipalities.

Think of Apple’s 2000 – 2020 transformation; and/or NASA numerous successes in ratio to its failures when imagining what Strategic Innovation is about. And a new definition of Strategic Innovation is needed for these times in any case; along with not enough demonstrations of Strategic Innovation showing up locally as to establishing resilience and then sustainability.

And or course, we need to go all the way back to FDR’s New Deal and President Johnson’s Great Society to see Strategic Innovation as more than ‘Big Tech’; as transformation often seems to center around currently. A National Bureau of Economic Research study reminds us that for America, the Operation Warp Speed example of Strategic Innovation to deliver COVID 19 vaccines in ‘crisis innovation’ mode is not unfamiliar territory.

We can also lead in moving from Anthropogenic Climate to Climate Protection modes. Our municipalities is where Climate Protection needs to happen and where all the beneficiaries live.

So, we deserve a platform to work out where we want to head next. By no means are just any combination of strategy, innovation, and risk managing practices and outcomes good for us. Agreed it would have been better to sort out what resilience and sustainability looks like at this point as well. So, there is plenty to do with strategy, innovation, and risk.

One way to think about Strategic Innovation is very high value from interacting with strategy, existing innovation, and risk in purposeful ways. Like sending people to the moon and as a result getting solar photovoltaics, fuel cells, and micro computing as byproducts from the NASA platform.

A new Municipality to Municipalities platform rates a new way of thinking combined with the right tools and space. That’s SI 2.

It should be that most Americans recognize that a municipality is not just a large urban area. If America’s rural areas are not important for some, that’s a real problem.

Join the Strategy Innovators

A Strategy Innovator can be a university student about to launch a new career as well as a Mayor; other legislators; a city or county manager and their appointed leadership; a business owner; a doctor; a nurse; an educator; a nonprofit executive; you. What we once thought of as leadership over the past few decades may or may not be equating to the version of Municipal Success we might do well to discover and act upon today.

Along with joining the SI 2 Lab, please connect through the StratGen Ideas and Events page; the StratGen newsletter; or the contact form.

SI 2 Dynamism is what happens when we Get Together about the Future

According to MIT, one definition of platform innovation — platform innovation being one form of strategic innovation — is:

“[…] environments, computing or otherwise, that connect different groups and derive benefits from others participating in the platform. The underlying concept covers companies from Google to Facebook […]”

Should a universal concept of Municipal Success be difficult to define?

Why can’t such an important idea be more ‘101’?

What is the management of strategy, innovation, risk, and Social Synergy for purposes of establishing resilience and then sustainability… where we live: in Our Municipalities. Are we getting better at making where we live work for most people? What if ‘most people’ starts with strategic focus on those at the base of the economic pyramid?

However much personal experience we may or may not have in developing municipal comprehensive plans and other strategic plans, we can afford to take a fresh look at how Municipal Success is defined and developed today. For some, a Tourism Development Authority and a Business Improvement District connected to very traditional approaches to Economic Development Strategy, entrepreneurship, and corporate recruitment to help create the basis of Municipal Success.

Strategy, Innovation, and Risk = Sustainable Value Creation

Sustainable Municipalities have a lot of factors feeding into what that sustainability criteria might be about at this point in history. The time, scope / quality, and financial issues about whether there are upside or downside outcomes include most Americans. Rural towns and counties are municipalities too.

It should be conventional wisdom that strategy and innovation integrate. There’s a strategy behind AI deployment and other technology. Our politicians will have an innovative approach to strategy. The domains can be different; but strategy and innovation work with the upsides and downsides of risk… globally.

Strategic Innovation is something many Americans experience on a regular basis through ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The platforms and innovation ecosystems behind NASA, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook

The next 25 years rate a new approach to value creation in contrast to Sustainability 1.0. New approaches, practices, and systems that often simply repurpose and redesign what is already being done that works and is familiar is StratGen Management Consulting for Public Good backed with the SI 2 suite of dynamic services.

So, a group of Strategy Innovators from across the nation in the SI 2 Lab can form an association to change the game in any domain. Strategy Innovators define the 21st Century term of game change:

Game Change, noun

an event, idea, or procedure that effects a significant shift in the current manner of doing or thinking about something.

– Oxford Languages

The SI 2 Lab is the first M2M Human Ecosystem built for Municipal Success Discovery and Action. Please join the SI 2 Lab and contact StratGen about co-created client projects.

Join the SI 2 Lab

Strategy Innovators… together.