the asset shuffle

Here is some really interesting research on innovation that fits well with our approach to strategy. In a nutshell, the researchers point out that innovation is often the result of recombinations of existing assets rather than the development of brand new inventions. In fact, they posit that the generation of novel technological combinations engenders practically infinite configurations.

This is the notion behind an important aspect of our approach to strategy. One of the ways we operationalize this is to ask participants to write down their assets (skills, specialized knowledge, experiences, networks, and other resources) on index cards, one per card. We then collect them, shuffle, then lay them out in random combinations of twos, threes, and four.

Participants write down the potential opportunities that emerge in their minds as they consider these assets kinked and leveraged with one another. We call this simple, yet powerful exercise the "asset shuffle."