Enterprise Portfolio Management Series: Innovation within and existing Enterprise
Blog: Brian's Blog - Enterprise Strategy, Architecture and Management
Enjoyed Alexander Osterwalder’ s article on Portfolio Management today. He covers some of the same ground I’ve been presenting within Microsoft, DMR and IBM over the years. The enterprise has many portfolios. These are categorized in hierarchies, functional domains, temporal horizons, as well as the innovate/exploit Portfolios.
The issue I found within many organizations was with the cross-over from Innovate to Exploit. While at IBM it took a while to build out the practices to somewhat effectively do such. At IBM we had embraced “Alchemy of Growth” for portfolios but the transition became the stumbling block. At other companies I’ve consulted to, it’s the same. Creating that system that enables escape velocity from the innovation center and then captured into a new orbit around the performance center of gravity ( i.e., exploitation of the innovation into the core business ) is no small challenge.
This issue will be addressed in the Enterprise Portfolio Management Levels 3/4/5 articles in the series.
Slide Notes
Today one hears a lot about innovation or being innovative in an enterprise. However, and enterprise by its nature seeks to maintain a status quo. For an Enterprise to survive today management needs to create an equilibrium between innovation and performance.
The two major centers of gravity in an enterprise are its innovation and performance engines – “Beyond the Idea”
Concepts, Initiatives, and Activities will stay in the gravitational sphere that supports these unless escape velocity is reached
Once escape velocity is reached unless influenced by another gravitational center these items will spin off into the void
Effective portfolio actions assist in the change in mass in each of the gravity centers of an enterprise.
Beyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization, Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble, 2013
Filed under: Enterprise Architecture, Portfolio Management, Systems Thinking 
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