Digital Strategy Through Innovation - Why Its Practice Should Mirror a Coral Reef

 When we research the history of innovation and in what situations it flourishes, we discover that several types of collaborative conditions support new ideas and inventions. A recent Harvard Review story story titled Innovate like a Kindergartner, noted that collaboration was a key ingredient for innovation. With this in mind, how can we use these optimal conditions to create rich professional experiences and resources for better digital strategy innovation?

Steven Johnson, in his recent book Where Good Ideas Come From, theorizes that two examples of these environments include large cities (urban communities), and the Web. Why? Because numerous connections are made and remixed in these densely populated environments, the result being a sort of hybrid melting pot of ideas and solutions.

Digital Strategy planning requires broad business knowledge and digital marketing experience, including business startup experience. Startup experience is valuable because of the dynamic fast-paced culture of startups, which provides opportunity to be technically and creatively inventive and financially resourceful (a requirement for many brand campaigns). Startups are often required to launch products and services; their small intense business teams quickly develop excellent cross-platform collaboration skills.

So in practice, the digital strategy planning process should mirror the coral reef: an environment where different forms of information and experience, such as media, ideas, digital and legacy media experiences, business operations, technology research (trend and non-trend types), and strategies should be integrated. Your personal digital strategy center of excellence then becomes a complete resource toolbox for better and more insightful digital solutions and innovation.

For example, in a healthy coral reef, zooxanthellae can provide up to 90% of a coral's energy requirements; this symbiotic relationship enables corals' success as reef-building organisms in tropical waters. Sometimes businesses do not allow for cross-department collaboration and broad research during the digital strategy planning stage. The result: the strategist is required to produce a strategy report and launch and implement a timeline before proper macro and micro research is complete.

An environment that truly supports innovation at the digital strategy level should operate as Johnson suggests, like the "zooxanthellae, coral, and the parrot fish, not competing but collaborating, borrowing and reinventing each others work", on a micro and macro level.

Collaborative environments allow for ideas to develop, like the Internet and the Web do. The Web was developed through a collaborative effort of academics and with government funding. Once the academic and private sectors came together, only then could the strength of the Internet/Web come into existence.

If you take a look at digital strategy from a macro perspective, you will also find that good ideas can come from good research into areas such as: a brand's history, the competition, current global trends in a specific niche or broader target market, current digital technology, consumer behavior, where technology trends or non-trends are headed in six months to a year, and identifying and addressing the requirements of clients. All this allows for the development of innovative new tools and techniques. By using technology together with traditional promotions, you also drive new features, social integration, and strategy.

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