Holistic horizon scanning and strategy maps for a foundation
Foundation for renewal of Finnish society and sustainable business
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The foundation is a non-governmental organization whose mission is to support the sustainable renewal of the economy and society. This foundation was established in 1950s, and they focus on technology and business. For the basis of their strategy work, they needed to understand the changes and shaping forces in their operating environment to reflect their role in it in the future.
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Success criteria
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Inspire and provoke the board
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Identify key trends affecting key stakeholders
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Translate insights into strategy maps
Swanlake provided holistic horizon scanning leading to concrete strategic actions and options for the future
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We identified 140+ signals and 9 underlying themes describing the driving forces in the overall industry and the foundation’s operating environment, including the needs of its customers.
We translated the findings into 7 strategic maps describing the options and emerging opportunities to steer the Board’s thinking for future direction.
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The overall process aligned the Board's thinking, helped to identify new opportunities and created a concrete portfolio of strategic options.
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The strategy maps covered critical topics such as brand positioning, operations, partners, capital, and impact assessment criteria. All the findings and recommendations were validated with real customers to provide outside-in viewpoints and to ensure that these recommendations would serve the target groups' needs, now and in the future. This helped the Board to benchmark their ideas against their target groups' needs and hopes for the future.
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"The working process and collaboration was smooth and fun, yet efficient. Our Board's thinking is now aligned, and we have a clear direction. The work expanded our thinking into new, previously unexplored territories."
— COO, Foundation
"As a result, we have begun contacting potential partners to explore new capital initiatives, and soon we are about to launch our three future-proof spear-head themes. We will also organize more events as collaborative actions."
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— COO, Foundation