Celebrating 30 years of growth and innovation

30 Years of Growth and Innovation: what has changed — and what hasn’t

In 2025, Strategos celebrates three decades of helping organizations pursue growth and innovation with purpose and discipline. Strategos was co-founded in 1995 by Gary Hamel, only a year after his book “Competing for the Future” was published. This book and Gary’s broader research served as the foundation of our approach to strategy and innovation. Since then, the world has transformed, and thirty years on, it is both valuable and fun to look back.

“Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance. It’s the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It’s the only strategy for outperforming a dismal economy” – Gary Hamel

The year 1995 is viewed by many as year zero of the digital world we live in today, and it has had a profound impact on all aspects of our daily lives. Some examples include Toy Story, the first all-CGI movie, the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 95, as well as its first web browser, Amazon and eBay were born, people started to search all of the internet’s 2700 websites with Yahoo, and Sony launched their first PlayStation. Equally important but perhaps less visible are the advancements and innovations in healthcare, energy, automotive, and many other industries in which Strategos has been fortunate to contribute.

In organizations, we have seen tremendous change, starting with the adoption of Information Technologies to optimize business operations, transform customer journeys, and impact business models. As a result, many opportunities emerged for new and existing companies that were bold enough to seize them. Yet amid all this change, one truth has endured: achieving sustainable growth requires more than chasing the latest management or technology trend. It demands systemic, long-term transformation – the kind that enables organizations to continuously reinvent themselves by creating options for future growth.

From Efficiency to Innovation: the shifting focus of growth

When Strategos was founded in 1995, business excellence was synonymous with efficiency. Total Quality Management (TQM), and later Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing, defined how companies sought to improve. The goal was consistency, control, and incremental performance gains. Innovation, if it appeared on the agenda, was typically confined to R&D labs or product development teams — not seen as a strategic capability embedded across the organization.

Then came the digital revolution. The rise of information technology in the early 1990s and early 2000s forced industries to rethink their business models, structures, and value chains. The internet and e-commerce didn’t just streamline existing processes; they created entirely new markets and experiences. This was the era when the speed of change began to outpace the structures built to manage it. Strategos came at the right time to introduce a new way of thinking about achieving that goal.

As digitalization took hold during the 1990s, innovation shifted from an optional differentiator to a core driver of growth. Organizations that once relied on operational excellence alone discovered that efficiency without adaptability leads to obsolescence. But innovation on its own wasn’t enough. Innovation approaches needed to be lifted from R&D and product development by partnering with ambitious, inspiring, and galvanizing strategies to unleash the creativity locked up inside the organization.

Over the past three decades, Strategos has partnered with global leaders to navigate this transition — helping them move beyond traditional product innovation to systemic business model innovation, open innovation, and the integration of sustainability into growth strategy.

What has endured: the core principles of innovation

While practices have evolved, the foundational principles that guided Strategos’ early work — rooted in Gary Hamel’s pioneering ideas about strategic renewal — remain as relevant today as ever.

Innovation needs to be systemic.

Real growth happens when innovation is embedded in the organization’s DNA — in its leadership, processes, and culture. Too often, companies delegate innovation to a team, a lab, or a program — separating it from daily decision-making. But innovation thrives only when leadership, processes, and culture are aligned around a shared intent to explore, experiment, and renew.

Orthodoxies must be challenged.

Every organization is guided by unspoken assumptions — the “way we do things around here.” These orthodoxies often protect today’s success but constrain tomorrow’s potential. They define which opportunities feel safe to pursue and which ideas are dismissed before being tested.

Challenging orthodoxies requires courage and curiosity. It’s about making the invisible visible: questioning long-held beliefs about customers, competitors, and capabilities. The organizations that achieve transformational growth are those willing to ask the uncomfortable questions — to test the limits of what’s considered possible and reimagine the foundations of their business.

Diversity fuels creativity.

Breakthrough ideas rarely come from uniform thinking. Innovation accelerates when organizations embrace diverse perspectives — across disciplines, geographies, experiences, and even organizational boundaries. Diversity brings friction, but it’s the productive kind — the clash of ideas that forces teams to see problems and opportunities differently.

The most innovative companies intentionally design for diversity in how they form teams, gather insights, and make strategic decisions. They bring together people who think differently and create an environment where those differences are not just tolerated but celebrated. True creativity comes from synthesis — connecting perspectives that rarely meet in traditional structures. When diversity is harnessed effectively, it becomes a renewable source of competitive advantage.

Work from the future back.

You will never exceed your ambitions, so set them high and work backward to introduce stretch and find innovative ways to achieve them. This results in creating a balanced portfolio of opportunities that extends the core business and creates options for the future.

These principles have guided Strategos for 30 years and continue to anchor how we evolve our approach as the pace of change accelerates.

AI, Sustainability, and the new frontier of innovation

Today, artificial intelligence, sustainability, and digital ecosystems are redefining what innovation means and how it is practiced. AI promises to amplify both efficiency and creativity, enabling organizations to explore new business models, reimagine customer experiences, and unlock previously hidden value. Strategos has been exploring and successfully leveraging AI in all aspects of its approaches and continues to explore novel ways to help our clients. 

Sustainability, meanwhile, challenges companies to view growth through a broader lens — one that integrates social and environmental impact with financial performance. We have seen that this perspective has opened up many new opportunities for companies that were bold enough to take the lead.

Yet these opportunities also introduce new complexities. Technology alone will not create competitive advantage. The real differentiator depends on unleashing an organization’s embedded capabilities — the ability to continuously sense, interpret, and act on emerging opportunities.

Many organizations still struggle to achieve this balance. They overinvest in optimizing the core business and underinvest in exploring new growth horizons—the result: strong short-term performance but fragile long-term resilience.

Lessons from 30 years of helping companies grow

When we set out to help companies in 1995, we believed a different approach was needed, and luckily, there were bold leaders who shared that belief with us. From the early days when we helped Shell set up GameChanger, an organization that focused on funding transformational opportunities, we supported Whirlpool in achieving its ambition to include every single employee in its innovation efforts. We assisted Goodyear in creating an entirely new digital venture and supported Syngenta and Total in developing the next generation leaders of the company to anchor a growth mindset. We worked with Korea Telecom and Samsung and had to adapt Strategos’ ways of working to fit Asian cultures, and we developed growth strategies that harness sustainability in Latin America. These have been great experiences with great results for our clients.

Reflecting on three decades of work with over 400 organizations worldwide, several enduring lessons stand out:

1. Systemic change outlasts fashionable trends.

Too often, organizations pursue the latest “innovation method” without addressing the underlying systems and values that shape behavior. Sustainable innovation requires aligning leadership, governance, and culture — not just adopting new tools and solutions.

2. Innovation thrives on empowerment, not control.

Growth emerges when employees are encouraged to explore, experiment, and challenge assumptions — not when rigid structures or risk-averse cultures constrain them.

3. The future belongs to organizations that learn faster than their competitors.

Agility is no longer about speed alone; it’s about adaptability and learning. The organizations that thrive are those that view uncertainty not as a threat, but as a source of opportunity.

4. Sustainability and innovation are now inseparable.

The growth strategies of the future will be those that create shared value — benefiting business, society, and our planet collectively.

What hasn’t changed — and why it matters

The methods and technologies of innovation may evolve, but the essence remains constant: growth is fueled by systematically exploring new perspectives, harnessing diversity, and unleashing unexploited potential.

At Strategos, we continue to believe that innovation is a capability to be built and nurtured over time. We help organizations do this by addressing real business challenges and adopting new behaviors during that process. The organizations that master this will not only survive disruption; they will shape the future of their industries.

Looking Ahead: the next chapter of growth and innovation

As we enter our fourth decade, Strategos remains committed to helping organizations innovate and grow. The future will bring opportunities for those ready to rethink how they grow, compete, and lead.

The organizations that thrive will be those that:

• Embrace AI as a catalyst for creativity, not just automation.
• Treat sustainability as a core growth driver, not a compliance issue.
• Build innovation systems that are as robust as their operational systems.
• Continuously challenge orthodoxies and reimagine what’s possible.

A provocative challenge to leaders

For 30 years, Strategos has helped organizations move beyond incremental improvement to achieve transformational growth. The question for today’s leaders is not whether to innovate — but finding the right way for them to do so.

Are you ready to build an organization capable of continuous renewal — one that grows by design, not by chance?

The future will happen with or without you. If you have the ambition to shape it, talk to Strategos.

Onward!