Accelerating Innovation through Digital Strategy
The Situation
The VP of Research and Development for a major Energy Company needed to increase the rate of product innovation while modernising and rationalising his R&D facilities.
It had been some years since a true breakthrough innovation had been produced, and with an aging lab environment and critical data ‘stranded’ in standalone lab equipment, the R&D function was not fit for a competitive future in which agile experimentation would be key to meeting demand for new and differentiated products.
A clear and unifying vision for R&D was essential.
The Task
The challenge was to unlock the latent value of data stranded in standalone machines, use Data Science to reduce the time needed for idea evaluation & concept proving, and ultimately find more opportunities for commercialization.
The VP needed a modern, digital architecture to enable that aim, supported by a fully costed Roadmap.
The challenge of leading this initiative was given to the Business Architecture team, against a backdrop of low trust between business and IT. The Architects needed to reassure the VP and the Steering Group that they fully understood the required business outcomes.
The Action / Approach
A Working Group was formed of Architects, Business/IT partners, and SMEs from across R&D (i.e. the customer), conducting a series of multi-day workshops over a 2-month period.
Initially following a Design Thinking approach, the Working Group created a unifying vision – the ‘digital lab ecosystem’. The first major milestone was to secure buy-in to this vision at the Steering Group level.
With the vision ratified, the Working Group were able to construct a ‘strategy on a page’ (using the Business Motivation Model), describing business drivers (WHY), goals (WHAT), strategies (HOW), and measurable objectives, directly aligned to the digital lab vision.
The Working Group could then turn its attention to Architecture. Starting with business capabilities, we focused on identifying the true strategic differentiators, weighting capabilities on their importance to strategy then designing the optimal solution approach based on the People, Processes, Information, and Tools necessary to enable those capabilities (including a modern Laboratory Information Mgmt System and Data Science skills).
Roadmap planning could then be structured around the delivery of Capability Increments, building capabilities iteratively based on a mix of strategic value and complexity, providing a strategic transformation program over a 3 year period, with clear traceability from each project to the digital lab vision.
The Result
The Digital Lab Ecosystem concept became a focal point for the entire R&D company, its partners, and customers, with the Architecture team gaining credibility and trust by embracing a more Design-Led approach.
The VP received a Roadmap that was explicitly aligned to his vision for the Digital Lab, providing confidence that his investments in digital technology would enable the right business outcomes.
Focus In On: Responsible for Innovation
New Areas of Value:
Effective delivery against financial targets
Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
Enabling competitive differentiation and increasing market share
Viable, scalable and actionable roadmap to deliver innovation and change
Improvements around:
Inefficient or misaligned operating model and lack of business agility
Unclear business strategy and requirements
Disconnect between culture and future vision
Poor asset management
Lack of appropriate capabilities, skills, tools and methods
