BS ISO 56006:2021 pdf download – Innovation management — Tools and methods for strategic intelligence management — Guidance
5.5 Interpretation
5.5.1 General This is the step where knowledge is generated by interpreting information in accordance with the context of the organization. Information generated under various contexts, i.e. market, government, social, may be brought in to know the “how and why behind changes”.
5.5.2 Outcome of interpretation — Knowledge (interpreted information) This is the actual knowledge valuable for the strategic decision maker, i.e. information that is useful to make a strategic decision. Examples can include: mapping of competitors’ activities and highlight of weak signals; identification of priorities for technical development and roadmap towards implementation. The interpretation involves a range of different competencies.
This can include aspects, e.g.:
— integration of data from different sources in order to achieve synergies, in which the combination of information from different sources constitutes a whole with a greater relevance and scope than the individual pieces of information;
— interpretation of the information, with the objective of determining what is valid and what is relevant for decision-making including, e.g. the understanding of the analysed information or a forecast of its consequences and foreseeable evolution;
— verification of the meaning of the information which has been analysed, e.g. concerning the technical content and the market/commercial relevance, and of their likely consequences for the organization; Feedback and iterations between interpretation and data gathering/analysis can happen depending on the specific case, e.g. to add or modify a dataset, apply different analytics tools, and to avoid any possible misinterpretation.
NOTE Some common outputs can be in the form of a “what if” type of analysis presenting choices (case analysis) for, e.g. direction, cause and effect relations, intellectual simulations, management, scenario modelling. Knowledge can be verified through, e.g. reverse framing of scenario, cause-effect analysis.
5.6 Recommendation
5.6.1 General This final step communicates intelligence to top management with recommendations relevant to the scope of strategic intelligence application, to support and inform decision-making. 5.6.2 Outcome of recommendation
— Intelligence (communicated knowledge) Communication tools are used to transfer intelligence to the management functions responsible for strategic decision-making, e.g. top management, senior managers, general managers, heads of strategy/innovation functions, research and development directors. They should be open to the recommendations and available to implement bidirectional communication on subsequent actions. Some examples can be:
— prospective planning: proposals for actions in response to changes, or expectations of changes in the analysed environment; — making improvements: proposals for actions needed to address limitations, inefficiencies or to minimize weaknesses identified;
— pursuing opportunities: proposals for actions to exploit identified opportunities;
— risk reduction: proposals for actions to reduce identified risks;
— evaluation of the technology and / or market options;
— collaboration, identification of potential partners and related partnering options;
— innovation: proposals for new ideas and / or research, development and innovation activities and initiatives;
— impacts and interactions between technologies and current/potential offerings, e.g. products,services and processes;
— regular monitoring (identifying responsible parties, frequency, methodology, scoring and actions required) to quickly identify new technologies or market opportunities for the organization, or to justify abandoning those with low potential for value realization.
5.7 Strategic intelligence validation Leadership should recognise that intelligence is an explorative and judgement-based activity and has inherent uncertainty. Invariably, it has some human bias coming from the personal experience of the individual involved in the activity.
In spite of verifications at each step, there may still be a need to validate the recommendations. Validation should be carried out by means of an independent review. Validation can require additional data and information, or a subset of data that was initially gathered but kept aside just for use at this stage.
The strategic intelligence team can define one or more models that can be used for strategic intelligence validation, e.g. data integrity check, review of sources of information. Recommendations made to leadership can bring up new questions and trigger validation or the need for confirmation of some of them.
In case recommendations are not fully validated, they should be supported with some form of risk assessment and mitigation steps.BS ISO 56006 pdf download.