Escaping Wonderland: why innovation needs a destination

"If you don’t know where you're going, any road will lead you there". That quote, spoken by the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, always resonated with me and, whilst a whimsical idea in Wonderland, not having a direction for your business may be costly. Fortunately, roadmaps are a counterpoint to this quote as they force you to answer: where are we going? And why? Important clarity that shapes which roads you take, what trade-offs you accept, and where you invest your time, money, and energy.  Innovation has become the buzzword of boardrooms and strategy decks alike. But the truth is, innovation without intentional direction can be risky. That’s why effective road mapping, not just in the IT sense, but in a business-wide strategic sense, is essential.

The problem

In my role, I often find that the most successful roadmaps aren’t the most ambitious ones, they’re the most pragmatic and, most importantly, they create space for collaboration across technical, operational, and strategic layers. Too many businesses confuse movement with progress. They invest in shiny new tools or AI pilots, but without a structured view of what they're solving, for whom, and how it connects to the broader business strategy.

The solution

Our solution comes in two parts: a role whose aim is primarily focused around driving strategy and innovation for our customers and a framework and delivery methodology for how we do that. Handily, both are described below:

1. Our Solution Director(s): Put simply, the Solution Director role is focused on driving innovation across our accounts, specifically technical roadmaps and strategic direction. This new role is part of a cohesive whole, working hand-in-hand with other key roles and functions including our CTO, Account Directors, Pre-Sales Architects and product development enabling this role to enact dynamic change.
2. Our innovation engine: The innovation engine concept is here to help drive a deepening client engagement, shifting from reactive to proactive value creation.  Our subject matter expertise in digital transformation, consultative empowerment and expert partnership network with leading venders such as Microsoft, combined with our collective sector knowledge across a broad range of clients place us in a unique situation to be able to truly empower our clients with innovative solutions (and importantly convert this ideation into revenue).

The output of the innovation engine is that our clients will have a clear roadmap of co-developed innovation initiatives (through a technical roadmap and three horizons document), and a stronger relationship with us as a strategic partner rather than a service vendor.

Fuelling innovation

We recognise that innovation starts at home - we create value every day for a wide variety of customer and use case and ensuring that value feeds the wider engine is vital. The pillars that fuel our innovation engine include: 

• Growth mindset: a growth mindset is encouraging ourselves to embrace challenges, learn from failure, and continuously improve. It’s critical in fast-changing environments because it cultivates agility, drives collaboration, and fosters a culture where people are not afraid to experiment or stretch beyond their comfort zones. Pitch battles, taking objectives and pitching them at internal and partner judging panels to help refine our go-to market approaches, helping each other be better. Upskilling, certifications, peer reviews - when the bar raises, we all prosper.
• Customer voice: it’s imperative we listen to our customers and that they are provided with a medium to share their views with not only us, but like-minded leaders in both the technology and business space.
• Industry trends: keeping in front of the vast amount of change can be difficult. Azure user groups, tech focused webinars, industry events are all key to make sure we stay ahead of the curve.
• Specialist partner networks: keeping a close relationship with our strategic partners, ensuring we share narratives around what’s new and upcoming. Regular (bi-weekly) meetings with our counterparts from Microsoft, for example help us keep a finger on the pulse.

Outputs that work

The aim of the game is to clearly communicate innovation opportunities, and a roadmap of initiatives that the desired outcomes will deliver, turning the analysis into an actionable plan that we can confidently move forward with.

1. Technical Roadmap

The roadmap is the capstone of the assessment output - a structured plan of “what happens next.” This is often presented as a timeline or as a sequenced list of initiatives grouped by priority. Each initiative on the roadmap corresponds to one or more gaps identified but concentrates on providing an intuitive map of tech progression over time.

2. Three Horizons document

A Three Horizons document provides a structured view of short, medium, and long-term opportunities across a customer’s landscape. It helps align immediate operational improvements (Horizon 1), emerging growth initiatives (Horizon 2), and future-facing innovation bets (Horizon 3) within a single strategic narrative. This enables intuitive prioritisation, stakeholder engagement, and investment planning but also helps build momentum toward transformative outcomes.

Why all of this matters

Innovation, put simply, is finding better ways to do things. This is not necessarily about new tech, it’s about new thinking. Our objectives through the innovation engine are clear:

• We attain stronger relationship with our customers for whom we are a strategic partner rather than a service vendor
• We provide relevant, actionable, innovation, not just noise
• We provide a clear, intuitive roadmap and accompanying Three Horizons document for customers to map and guide where they are on their journey

The bottom line

You can’t steer a ship that doesn’t know where it’s going. Road mapping brings direction, and innovation brings propulsion. Without both, organisations risk drifting - not because they lack talent, but because they lack alignment. If you haven’t revisited your roadmap in a while, or if you’ve never had one, maybe it’s time to ask: are we building the future with intention, or just reacting to the noise?