1. STRATEGIC DOING FOR
COMPANIES
Exploring
how
agile
strategy
can
support
and
accelerate
innovation
and
top-­‐line
growth
for
companies
May,
2015
Prepared
by:
Ed
Morrison
Scott
Hutcheson
Purdue
Center
for
Regional
Development

2. the basics
01
table of contents
case studies & testimonials
02
the backstory
03
offerings
04
how you can engage
05

3. What is Strategic
Doing?
How does it work?
Why does it work?
Who uses Strategic
Doing?
the
basics

4. ‹#›
The Strategic Doing Credo
the basics
In October 2011 the Strategic
Doing Design Team drafted this
clear statement of beliefs that
guide the development of
Strategic Doing.
Learn more about our Design
Team on page 17.
4
3
2
1
We believe we have a responsibility to
build a prosperous, sustainable future
for ourselves and future generations.
No individual,
organization or place can
build that future alone.
Open, honest, focused and caring collaboration
among diverse participants is the path to
accomplishing clear, valuable, shared outcomes.
We believe in doing, not just
talking-and in behavior in
alignment with our beliefs.
section 01
The Credo focuses us on what matters.

5. ‹#›
What is Strategic Doing?
the basics
Think about how often you need to
collaborate - across the units of a
single organization or among multiple
organizations. But how do we design
these collaborations? How do we
manage them? How does strategy
work in a collaboration. Strategic
Doing provides a simple set of rules to
answer these questions.
With Strategic Doing, people:
▪ Link and leverage their assets to
create new strategic opportunities
▪ Convert high-priority opportunities
into measurable outcomes
▪ Define pathfinder projects that
move toward these outcomes
Strategic Doing is designed for
open, loosely connected networks-
the common situation in which
nobody can tell anyone else what to
do.
Managing complexity requires
simple rules. We have designed
Strategic Doing to be intuitive and
concise. In a matter of hours, a
loosely organized network of people
can generate a sophisticated
strategic action plan and begin
implementing their ideas.
Watch a video introduction.
In today’s world we need
strategic thinking more than ever,
but we cannot rely on slow,
cumbersome traditional
approaches to strategy.
Strategic Doing is an agile
strategy discipline designed for
today’s world.
section 01
Strategic Doing, an agile strategy discipline, enables people to form action-oriented
collaborations quickly, guide them toward measurable outcomes, and make
adjustments along the way.

6. ‹#›
How does it work?
the basics
How will we
get there?
By keeping our conversations focused on these critical questions,
Strategic Doing generates all the components we need for practical,
agile strategic action plans. Over time, we make continuous
adjustments to these plans, as we learn by doing.
Strategic Doing focuses our
conversation on the two critical
questions of strategy:
Where are
we going?
Strategic Doing works by
focusing intensively and
relentlessly on the critical
questions of strategy for
collaborations.
section 01
Collaborations are born and live in conversation.

7. ‹#›
Why does it work?
the basics
Intuitive
Each of us is experienced in making
strategic decisions in our personal lives
and in the organizations we control.
Yet, we rarely bring this experience into
our collaborations. Strategic Doing
builds off of these personal
experiences.
FunInductive
At the same time, most of us recognize
that we cannot forecast the future. We
often do not know what will work. By
stimulating a spirit of experimentation,
Strategic Doing encourages us to learn
continuously.
Finally, Strategic Doing promotes the
deeper conversations, as well as the
collaborative action, that most of us
find fun and engaging. Strategy
sessions are focused, short and
pragmatic.
section 01
Strategic Doing works because it is intuitive and stimulates learning by doing.

8. ‹#›
As a lean, agile strategy discipline,
Strategic Doing has applications in a
wide range of situations.
Innovation
Innovation no longer occurs within a
single organization. It occurs, rather, in a
network of suppliers, customers,
strategic partners, and, increasingly,
competitors. Strategic Doing can guide
the complex work needed for open
innovation.
Value Chains
Value chains are an important feature of
dynamic business growth, and Strategic
Doing is a fast way to build these
networks.
Focusing an organization
As organizations become flatter and
more networked, traditional
approaches to strategy no longer work
as well. Strategic Doing fills a void.
University engagement
Alongside teaching and research,
university engagement represents the
Third Mission of higher education.
Increasingly, universities are being
called upon to improve engagement
with their regional economy. Strategic
Doing delivers a lean and scalable
solution to leveraging university assets
in new and different ways.
Dealing with messy challenges in
communities and regions
We are increasingly confronting
complex, messy problems. In these
situations, multiple organizations,
each with a unique set of assets, need
a practical approach to designing and
guiding collaborations.
the basics
section 01
Who uses Strategic Doing?
Strategic Doing can be
applied to any complex
situation in which
collaboration represents the
only practical alternative.
Strategic Doing is designed for strategy and open, loosely connected networks.

9. Talent development in
Indiana
Rebuilding
neighborhoods in
Michigan
Clean energy growth in
Florida
Aerospace innovation in
Illinois
case
studies &
testimonials

10. ‹#›
Talent development in Indiana
In 2006, Purdue received a $15 million federal
investment to design new talent-development
innovations in a 14-county region surrounding its
flagship campus. The U.S. Department of Labor selected
13 regions nationally to experiment with new workforce
collaborations within advanced manufacturing.
Fast forward four years…
case studies & testimonials
In four strategic focus areas, we initiated over 60 new
collaborations and 80 percent of these initiatives
continued past the initial investment.
Among the initiatives:
▪ A guitar summer camp to teach manufacturing
skills to high school students, which is now a
national model
▪ The nation’s first green collar manufacturing
certification
▪ The Energy Systems Network
The team also responded quickly to a deep and
unexpected layoff of engineers in Kokomo, Indiana.
Watch a video that explains the story.
With 8 percent of the nationally
investment, Purdue generated 40
percent of the national results.
section 02

11. ‹#›
Rebuilding neighborhoods in Flint,
Michigan
case studies & testimonials
Bob Brown
Michigan State University
In the wake of a failed federal grant application, a group of
neighborhood leaders in Flint, Michigan, turned to
Strategic Doing. After working so hard on the grant
application, they wanted to stay together and actually do
something. With the support of Michigan State University,
the neighborhood leaders launched Neighborhoods
Without Borders.
The core team continues to come together and build new
networks with practical collaborations. Although it is
impossible to say for certain, the work of these leaders
has likely contributed to the dramatic reduction of violent
crime in Flint.
More important, perhaps, the neighborhood leaders have,
according to one, "broken their grant addiction.” They are
focused on mobilizing the many assets they have within
their neighborhood.
In neighborhoods besieged by complex,
wicked problems, Strategic Doing creates
hope through the power of taking action
with the assets or gifts that we already
possess.
In that moment when we combine assets,
we begin to tell a new story of opportunity
and possibility. Strategic Doing gives us the
power to change our lives, our
neighborhoods and our communities.
section 02

12. ‹#›
With theNASA shuttle
shutdown on its
doorstep,
industry and civic
leaders on the
Space Coast of
Florida turned to
Strategic Doing
to come up with
a strategy.
Clean energy growth in Florida
case studies & testimonials
With the pending NASA shuttle shutdown, firms in the Space
Coast region of Florida found themselves struggling to define
a strategy to respond. They turned to Strategic Doing.
In a series of large-scale workshops, a small group of
industry and civic leaders on the Space Coast saw the
opportunity for business growth in clean energy. Now a
industry consortium, Energy Florida is leading the
development of innovation and new business opportunities
and the Space Coast economy is transforming.
Check out the backstory with a video here.
section 02

13. In today's collaborative management culture Strategic Doing offers a tool that
allows team members to advance ideas to implementation quickly. The
Strategic Doing process selects ideas to which each member contributes and
the results are potentially as powerful as experienced with Lean
Management .
Janyce Fadden, VP/General Manager (retired)
Portescap/Danaher Motion
Executive in Residence
University of North Alabama
case studies & testimonials
section 02

14. The Strategic Doing (SD) approach might be one of the most effective ways of
implementing change on campus. It effectively replaces strategic planning, a
traditional pathway. At UW-Milwaukee, we have been able to move
forward ten projects related to Innovation & Entrepreneurship
transformations of curricula and institutional culture using SD. It is outcome
driven, but more importantly, it is adaptive. Our diverse team of faculty and
administrators have pivoted many times because of the continuous feedback
that we analyze and plug back in into the decision making process.
Iiyad V. Avdeev, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
case studies & testimonials
section 02

15. ‹#›
Aerospace innovation in Illinois
case studies & testimonials
Industry, higher education,
and civic leaders in Rockford,
Illinois have embraced
Strategic Doing as a valuable
way to build the collaborations
needed to accelerate
innovation and transform their
economy.
Rena Cotsones, assistant vice
president for regional
engagement at NIU, is part of
a core team that has designed
an innovation ecosystem for
the regions aerospace
industry.
You can learn more about the
Rockford Area Aerospace
Network here.
Industry collaboration with higher education
institutions is infamously slow, with multiple
layers of approvals and an emphasis on the
need for new resources.
Strategic Doing's focus on what we could,
should and will do with the existing talents,
resources and authority of the people in the
room at the time breaks people free of that
limited thinking and helps them move
forward in real time.
Rena Cotsones
Northern Illinois University
section 02

16. Where did Strategic
Doing come from?
What is the Strategic
Doing Design Team?
the
backstory

17. ‹#›
Where did Strategic Doing come from?
the backstory
The roots of Strategic Doing can be traced back to the 1980s when corporate strategist Ed Morrison, used
these agile strategy disciplines to negotiate joint ventures in China on behalf of clients like General Electric,
Volvo, and the Ford Motor Company. As a student in Chattanooga, TN Scott Hutcheson became engaged in
strategy development work that set the stage for Chattanooga’s renaissance.
1980s
In 1994 a small group of industry leaders in Oklahoma City challenged Morrison to apply Strategic Doing in
designing and guiding a strategy to emerge from the “oil bust” and turn their city’s economy around. Instead
of launching a year-long strategic planning initiative and producing a “document” they engaged in a series of
“learning by doing” experiments. They transformed their city through collaboration and continuous
adjustment. During this time Hutcheson helped execute a software development strategy among three
partners: American Airlines, Marriott, Hilton, and Budget Rental Car.
1990s
2000s
In 2001, Morrison worked with Ernest Andrade in Charleston, South Carolina, to design a strategy for the
Charleston Digital Corridor. Charleston is now a hotbed of Internet startup companies. Hutcheson began to
pursue a Ph.D. at Purdue focusing on strategy, collaboration, and innovation. The two met when Morrison
took his work to Purdue where they integrated their strategy experience and began working together to
scale Strategic Doing.
Strategic Doing is now a discipline that is being replicated and applied in a number of different contexts
and settings in the U.S. and internationally. Morrison, Hutcheson, and their colleagues have taken their
work to over 30 states and five countries 2010s
section 03
Strategic Doing has evolved from over 25 years of field experience in designing strategy
in complex environments.

18. ‹#›
What is the Strategic Doing Design Team?
the backstory
section 03
Test and improve
the curriculum and tools
as they identify different
needs for skill
development.
Convene
twice a year from around
the country to discuss the
continued development
and deployment of
Strategic Doing.
Outline
major development goals that
Purdue can pursue in the
development of the discipline.
Guide
the development of Strategic
Doing: The Game. (Learn
more on page 25.)
The Design Team includes partners from industry and higher education committed to the
development and deployment of Strategic Doing. They:

19. Strategy Workshop
Introduction to
Strategic Doing
Strategic Doing: The
Game
Practitioner training
offerings

20. ‹#›
Strategy Workshop
offerings:
Strategy Workshops are designed to
form action-oriented collaborations
quickly, guide them toward measurable
results, and to make adjustments along
the way.
A workshop typically involves
participants from different units within a
single organization or representatives
from multiple organizations, that need to
collaborate to accomplished something
of shared value. A Strategic Doing
specialist guides this 2.5 hour
workshop.
A Strategy Workshop results in a
strategic action plan that includes
milestones, measurable outcomes, and
a Pathfinder Project to get the new
collaboration started.
section 04

21. ‹#›
Introduction to Strategic Doing
offerings:
An introductory session on Strategic
Doing provides participants with an
overview of how agile strategy gets done
in open, loosely connected networks.
The session introduces the basic concepts of
Strategic Doing and illustrates how others are
using the discipline.
After you complete Introduction
to Strategic Doing, you will be able
to apply these principles to your work.
The workshop concludes by exploring your “next
steps” in developing the skills needed to design
and guide complex collaborations.
section 04

22. ‹#›
Strategic Doing: The Game
offerings
Participants in
The Game learn that
they can develop
sophisticated strategies
quickly if they keep their
conversation focused on
answering strategic
questions.
Strategic Doing: The Game introduces
the skills of designing and guiding
collaborations through a simulation.
Participants gain valuable insights by focusing on the
challenges of innovation and transformation.
Purdue has developed several versions of the game appropriate
for a industry, civic leaders, or university professionals
section 04

23. ‹#›
Practitioner training: 3 day deep dive
offerings
Practitioner training is geared for professionals who
need a deeper grounding in the theory and practice of
collaboration in open networks.
In this three-day training program, participants learn by doing.
They learn how to incorporate Strategic Doing into their own work
and collaborations.
With this training,
professionals will be
able to design and
guide collaboration
using Strategic Doing
workshops.
section 04

24. ‹#›
Certification: practitioner training &
capstone experience
offerings
Strategic Doing certification enables professionals to
design and guide Strategy Workshops and facilitate
Strategic Doing: The Game.
The capstone experience includes field work that is supervised
by a member of the Strategic Doing faculty. During this fieldwork,
professionals learn to design and guide Strategic Doing
workshops.
section 04

25. ‹#›
Faculty: certification & Purdue residency
offerings
section 04
Strategic Doing faculty design new curriculum and they lead
the development of Strategic Doing in anchor universities.
Certified professionals are eligible to join the Strategic Doing faculty.
In order to take that step, the professional participates in a
residency at Purdue.
During this experience, the professional develops a plan for
contributing to the Strategic Doing curriculum. In addition, the
existing faculty provide suggestions for improving presentations and
teaching styles.

26. Keep up with our workhow you
can engage

27. ‹#›
Keep up with our work
How you can engage
section 05
On Facebook On Twitter On the web

28. For more information,
please contact
Ed Morrison
or
Scott Hutcheson, Ph.D.
edmorrison@purdue.edu
hutcheson@purdue.edu
888-750-7277