Innovation Strategy, Capability and Culture

Make innovation stick

The Challenge

For many leaders there is a wide gap between the aspirations to innovate and the ability to execute, resulting in disappointment, frustration, and a lack of commitment and further investment in innovation. We help you close that gap.

Innovation capability

What sets successful companies apart is that they all have a world-class innovation capability, a culture, and a strategy that drives innovation. Strategos works with you to embed innovation at the core of your organization. Our goal is simple: innovation that doesn’t fade after the next reorganization, but becomes a durable source of competitive advantage.

Innovation capability pillars

01 Build an operating system for growth
02 Innovation to the Core Program
03 Get the C-suite on board
04 Equip innovation teams to deliver
05 Develop an Innovation Culture

Capability detail

Build an operating system for growth

From ad-hoc innovation to a repeatable process. Instead of isolated initiatives and one-off campaigns, we help you build an integrated "operating system" for growth that points innovation at the most important strategic challenges, brings together the right talent, roles, and governance, defines transparent processes from opportunity discovery to scaling, encourages the behaviors that accelerate experimentation and learning, and supports everyone who has a role to play with methods, tools, and techniques. With this system in place, you don’t just launch more innovation projects — you increase the odds that innovation shapes the future of your business and contributes directly to company goals.

Hover or tap a pillar to see how it strengthens innovation capability.

Innovation capability

Build an operating system for growth

From ad-hoc innovation to a repeatable process. Instead of isolated initiatives and one-off campaigns, we help you build an integrated “operating system” for growth that points innovation at the most important strategic challenges, brings together the right talent, roles, and governance, defines transparent processes from opportunity discovery to scaling, encourages the behaviors that accelerate experimentation and learning, and supports all those who have a role to play with methods, tools, and techniques. With this system in place, you don’t just launch more innovation projects — you increase the odds that innovation shapes the future of your business and contributes to the goals of the company.

Innovation to the Core Program

Through our Innovation to the Core program, we partner with leading organizations to make innovation stick. We identify the state of innovation in your organization and a prioritized action plan to elevate your innovation capabilities to where they need to be. We translate your current initiatives into an innovation portfolio, resourcing distribution, and a governance model for clear and fast decision making, and adapt our repeatable innovation process to fit your situation. Together we identify pilot innovation projects to run and test with this new operating system, increase engagement by involving people in real, strategic challenges, and embed new ways of working so that innovation becomes “how we do things here”. We don’t just design the system on paper — we work with your teams on live challenges while the system is being put in place, so impact and capability grow together.

Get the C-suite on board

Innovation only scales when leaders are aligned and committed. We help executives articulate a compelling vision for innovation and growth, set clear expectations for outcomes, time horizons, and risk appetite, and understand the capabilities and capacity required to deliver on their ambitions. We also work with middle management to help them translate this ambition into day-to-day decisions, resource allocation, and support for their teams. The outcome is a leadership community that doesn’t just endorse innovation, but actively enables it.

Equip innovation teams to deliver

Teams need more than enthusiasm — they need structure, guidance, and confidence. Strategos provides practical methods and tools that are easy to understand and apply, along with workbooks, exercises, and examples that support learning by doing. We offer facilitation and coaching as teams tackle real innovation challenges. The result is not only stronger concepts and business cases, but also teams that have built skills they can use on the next wave of opportunities.

Build a culture of innovation

Creating an innovation culture relies on shared values that encourage creativity, risk-taking, and collaboration. Our methods promote diverse thinking by helping people develop new perspectives, removing barriers like restrictive policies, and strengthening skills. We nurture leaders who challenge norms and motivate teams toward breakthroughs. By integrating these elements, we help clients foster environments that unleash the company's potential.

```

How we helped Korea Telecom to develop their innovation capability

How does a legacy telecom with 10x the staff of its rivals reinvent itself and bring innovation to the core of the organization? Discover how Korea Telecom partnered with Strategos to turn a top-down, bureaucratic culture into a bottom-up, innovation-driven organization, building new capabilities, unleashing hundreds of ideas, and embedding “innovation DNA” across the business.

Innovation Capability FAQ

When should you consider this approach?

You should consider addressing your innovation capability when you’re experiencing a gap between ambition and execution.

Typical signals it’s time to act:

Innovation feels ad hoc or “campaign-based” rather than a repeatable, reliable process.
You’ve run hackathons, idea challenges, or pilots, but little has translated into a visible portfolio of growth opportunities tied to strategy.

Leaders talk about innovation, but results are sporadic, fragile, or overly dependent on a few individuals.

Leadership enthusiasm is fading because they don’t see clear progress, outcomes, or value from past innovation efforts.
People across the business are uncertain how to contribute, or they feel constrained by existing policies, processes, and metrics.
Innovation momentum tends to disappear after reorganizations or leadership changes, rather than being part of the organization’s DNA.

If you’re asking, “How do we make innovation stick and actually power our growth agenda?”, that’s the moment this engagement becomes essential.

What concrete outcomes will we have at the end of a Strategos engagement?

By the end of an innovation capability engagement, you’ll have far more than an innovation strategy on paper. You’ll have a functioning operating system for growth that’s already been tested on real challenges. Concretely, you can expect:

A clear view of your current innovation state and a prioritized action plan to elevate your capabilities to where they need to be.
Your existing efforts translated into a coherent innovation portfolio, with clarity on resource allocation and a governance model for fast, transparent decision-making.
A repeatable innovation process adapted to your organization from opportunity discovery through experimentation to scaling, not a one-size-fits-all template.
A set of pilot innovation projects actively running within the new operating system, giving you proof of concept and early wins.
Aligned and committed leadership, with a shared vision for innovation, clarity on risk appetite, time horizons, and the capabilities required to deliver.
Equipped innovation teams using practical methods, tools, workbooks, and coaching, with skills they can reapply to the next wave of opportunities.
Tangible shifts in culture and behaviors: more experimentation, more cross-functional collaboration, and more people confident that they can contribute to innovation.

In short, you leave with a working growth engine, not just concepts, but a system, and projects already in motion.

Is this only for large companies or specific industries?

No. The approach is not limited to any single industry or only to very large enterprises. It’s designed for organizations that are serious about making innovation a core capability rather than a one off initiative.

Whether you’re a large, global organization or a growing mid-sized company, if your goal is to embed innovation into “how we do things here,” this engagement is a fit.

What makes Strategos different from other strategy consultancies?

Several aspects of the Strategos approach set it apart from typical innovation or strategy consultancies:

Capability, not dependency: We don’t just deliver recommendations; we help you build a world-class innovation capability that becomes a durable source of competitive advantage.
An operating system for growth, not one-off initiatives: We focus on creating an integrated system that links strategy, governance, processes, roles, and culture so innovation is repeatable, not random.
“Innovation to the Core” thinking: Our work is grounded in the principles captured in our book Innovation to the Core.
Learning by doing on live challenges: We don’t run simulations on hypothetical problems. We work with your teams on real, strategic challenges while the new system is being built, so impact and capability grow together.
End-to-end focus: leadership, teams, and culture: We align the C-suite, support middle management, equip teams with practical tools, and address cultural barriers, ensuring that innovation is both authorized and enabled across the organization.

The result: innovation doesn’t fade with the next reorganization. It becomes a disciplined, visible, and measurable driver of your future growth.