SPP Innovation & Growth Strategy 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In a Blue Ocean Strategy, a company creates an uncontested market space primarily by:
- Outperforming rivals on all existing competitive dimensions
- Eliminating, reducing, raising, and creating factors to shift value curves (Correct answer)
- Acquiring the weakest competitor and absorbing its customers
- Lowering prices below all market competitors
Correct answer: Eliminating, reducing, raising, and creating factors to shift value curves
The Blue Ocean Strategy Four Actions Framework—Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create—reconstructs buyer value to make competition irrelevant.
Question 2: Which governance structure is most effective at protecting exploratory innovation units from being starved of resources by core business demands?
- Embedding innovators within existing product divisions
- Creating a structurally separate innovation unit with dedicated funding (Correct answer)
- Rotating all senior managers through innovation roles annually
- Publishing innovation KPIs in the annual report
Correct answer: Creating a structurally separate innovation unit with dedicated funding
Structural separation shields exploratory units from short-term profit pressure, giving them the autonomy and runway needed to develop disruptive innovations.
Question 3: A strategic planner wants to identify which market trends could become significant within 5-10 years but are not yet mainstream. Which scanning tool is most appropriate?
- Competitive benchmarking report
- Weak signal analysis / horizon scanning (Correct answer)
- Customer satisfaction survey
- Break-even analysis
Correct answer: Weak signal analysis / horizon scanning
Weak signal analysis (horizon scanning) detects faint early indicators of emerging trends before they become strong enough to appear in conventional market research.
Question 4: When a firm's core competency becomes a 'core rigidity' that prevents innovation, the recommended strategic response is:
- Double down on the competency to reinforce competitive advantage
- Unlearn or evolve the capability while building new ones (Correct answer)
- Outsource all R&D to avoid internal bias
- Merge with a competitor that shares the same rigidity
Correct answer: Unlearn or evolve the capability while building new ones
Dorothy Leonard-Barton's core rigidity concept suggests firms must deliberately unlearn entrenched routines and mindsets that block adaptation to new technological or market realities.
Question 5: Which metric is most useful for evaluating the commercial effectiveness of an innovation pipeline in its early stages?
- Number of patents filed
- Innovation funnel conversion rate (ideas to launched products) (Correct answer)
- Total R&D headcount
- Office space allocated to innovation labs
Correct answer: Innovation funnel conversion rate (ideas to launched products)
Funnel conversion rate tracks how many ideas advance through each stage gate to launch, revealing bottlenecks and the pipeline's overall productivity.
Question 6: A company uses scenario planning to prepare for an uncertain future. The primary output of scenario planning is:
- A single most-likely forecast for the next fiscal year
- Multiple internally consistent narratives of plausible future states (Correct answer)
- A ranked list of competitor threats
- An updated mission and vision statement
Correct answer: Multiple internally consistent narratives of plausible future states
Scenario planning produces 3-4 distinct, plausible future worlds to stress-test strategy against uncertainty rather than committing to one probabilistic forecast.
Question 7: Which of the following best defines 'growth hacking' in the context of innovation strategy?
- Rapidly acquiring competitors to increase market share
- Using data-driven, low-cost experiments to rapidly identify and scale customer acquisition tactics (Correct answer)
- Hiring away key talent from rival firms
- Expanding into every adjacent market simultaneously
Correct answer: Using data-driven, low-cost experiments to rapidly identify and scale customer acquisition tactics
Growth hacking combines product development, marketing, and data analytics in rapid, cheap experiments to discover the most efficient levers for user acquisition and retention.
SPP Innovation & Growth Strategy 5
In a Blue Ocean Strategy, a company creates an uncontested market space primarily by: