Vision and Strategy Development (Education)
Formulating long-term higher education vision and strategy
The Client
Top-rated London public research university.
The Engagement
Innovation Arts was engaged to help the University create a programme vision and strategy with a 2030 horizon, identifying and responding to global megatrends and seismic shifts in the future needs of the planet and society.
The Complexity
The subject of formulating a vision and strategy for a University was an exciting challenge for us, but it allowed us the opportunity to work with very high-level academic stakeholders, including the President and Provost, as well as with faculty members, professors and deans, exposing us to the ultimate in thought leadership. By incorporating high-disruption strategies, we defined the very long-term vision for the future academic vision, ambition and strategy for the university including the balance of teaching and research, and the ultimate staff and student experience desired.
Design and Delivery
We developed a three-stage programme which suited the academic commitments of our participant group, as well as allowing for a period of research and reflection between the first and second work sessions.
We first held a ‘divergent’ WorkSession— collating, digesting and understanding global megatrends, key disruptors, anticipated societal needs, threats and risks. By the end of the first work session the participants came away with a clearer understanding of the specific design criteria for the university of the 21st century.
Secondly, we facilitated the leadership team through an interstitial six-week programme of research and implication development in preparation for the next WorkSession.
Thirdly, we held a ‘convergent’ WorkSession iterating the curated research into the draft of a Vision, Strategy, and Points of View.
Results
We designed the draft of a branding strategy to identify simple, consistent messages around ‘exceptional people, embedded value, shaping the future.’
We defined the vision for the university student experience, and identified ways to create a community, how to uphold the university’s values in the admissions process, and ways to embrace collaboration to formulate a university for the 21st century. “No one is a commodity— everyone is a community.”
We drafted the strategy and guiding principles for sustainable growth by identifying funding sources, partnerships, the need for flexibility and the importance of sustainable growth in achieving a balanced institution.
We defined a vision for the next ten years of establishing sustained comprehensive partnerships across disciplines and identified a set of governing principles including transparency, strategy alignment, and the need for transformational impact.
A draft set of strategies to enable the vision of enabling education research and enterprise to match global needs through which the university will engage its community, engage its city, and benefit the world.
Deliverables
A website containing all of the sessions’ inputs, processes and outputs. This documented the design of the new framework and ways of working end-to-end, giving both accountability and ownership of the decisions taken, to accelerate their transformation from the Monday after the session.
The session scribing, converted into a Rich Picture clearly articulating the vision and the transformation process required to reach it:a nd communications assets.
A fully produced detailing the decisions taken and the implications of the transformation process for immediate use within the wider organisation by the sponsor team.
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