About the SI 2 Lab and Strategy Innovators: Meaning YOU

Whether it’s the contrast of the Wellbeing Economy; Finland’s high performance and practices like Anticipatory Innovation Government; or Germany’s SPRIN-D Federal Agency of Disruptive Innovation, American municipalities can afford to expect more from governing as we establish resilience and then sustainability. 

The SI 2 Lab is for leaders ready to do new as Strategy Innovators. Along with professional development, the StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 Platform (SI 2) is about development of Intellectual Capital and Social Synergy around our greatest national challenges. The places where we live, Our Municipalities, is the place to start working with resilience, adaptation, and sustainability. From the municipal level we can best provide responses to challenges, solution, and outcomes that are not always about the local level.

The mayor and city manager for the city I live in apparently offer little if any substantive professional training for the job of council member. Today’s local leaders need a skills update. It would seem like strategy and then innovation skills matter in these times of trial and opportunity for America’s municipalities.

SI 2 Lab Value

The SI 2 Lab is the space to generate ‘product’ like the first Municipal Strategic Management Guidebook. 

Along with being the first Human Ecosystem, the SI 2 Lab is the first association of Strategy Innovators.

The SI 2 Lab is an incubator for your personal and organization initiatives and those of your stakeholders.

Conversation and on purpose national networking

Intelligence = Intellectual Capital + Social Synergy

This is a social media ’site’ using Mighty Networks. There are many ‘innovation management’ software offerings globally. StratGen uses a combination of Mighty Networks, Podio, and Mindmanager as to software. There may be reason for others to use different software; however quite a bit can be done with the StratGen SI 2 software selections… and the costs are low compared to developing and owning proprietary software.

You can develop your own 'Mighty Network’; but I suggest trying the SI 2 Lab first as this is a uniquely valuable experience. 

If you have found social media to be a ‘innovation junk’ letdown, you no doubt have company. The journal Psychology of Popular Media published a 2023 study about reduced social media use improving the wellbeing of young people. In 2020 Pew Research Center published a survey titled 64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today.

You are joining the SI 2 Lab to join the first Human Ecosystem versus high dollar entrance fee and tech heavy traditional innovation ecosystem; and only Association of Strategy Innovators. Traveling across the country for meetings and conferences, and only interfacing otherwise via email and webinars, has limited utility as is. So, with the unique Mighty Networks value proposition running the SI 2 backbone, SI 2 Lab is superior to Facebook and LinkedIn as to interactive experience; and vastly superior as to what happened to Twitter… now nihilistically rebranded as ‘X’. 

There are a lot of people on other social media platforms; but the SI 2 Lab experience is not like the others. And the SI 2 Lab member questionnaire is a layer that cuts our phishing scams and 'AI bots’ that fill message feeds with empty offers. 

The SI 2 Lab membership fee is less than a dollar a month; and the annual fee is discounted 33 percent.

SI 2 Dynamism and Unity Future RSIS

StratGen platform thinking like the Unity Future Regional Strategic Innovation System (RSIS) helps municipalities see synergy among nearby allies — and then similarly organized regions across the nation. Real issue options versus distorted political gerrymandering zones of ideological ‘red’, ‘blue’, and supposedly competitive ‘purple’ zones are replaced with the actual high stakes value zones of our true challenges, solutions, and outcomes. Political outcomes do matter and there are tools and space in the StratGen Strategic Innovation Platform (SI 2) for SI 2 Dynamism treatment leading to a more resilient and then sustainable Advanced Liberal Democracy experience. Rather a tech only corporate only worldview of strategy and innovation, SI 2 Dynamism goes into multidomain spaces to work with any ally to deliver public good.

The Unity Future RSIS is nationwide and just needs participants. There is no need for massive private equity investments and Federal grants to get started. Just join the SI 2 Lab.

With a dynamic intervening platform, High Magnitude Truth transforms into High Magnitude Value.

– Grant Millin, Strategy Innovator and StratGen CEO

Becoming Strategy Innovators

There’s the strategist capability and then the innovator capability of a Strategy Innovator. A strategist is about 'structuring the future’, An innovator is in part about creativity; but there is special structuring for innovation. But let’s start with the creativity aspect of innovators as creativity is a word that gets thrown around a lot as to economic development ideas like the ‘creative economy’.

The advice from the Canada’s MaRS ‘urban innovation hub’ in their article 7 ways to generate better ideas for your business is pretty good for a business; or a government or nonprofit initiative; or the very beginning of any initiative from any sector. StratGen SI 2 Dynamism and the SI 2 Lab is not just for commercial interests and business entrepreneurs. One of the SI 2 Lab Synergy Groups is called Entrepreneurial Genius and any leader from any sector can join it.

The ‘art and science’ of strategic innovation is what the SI 2 Lab is opening up to more leaders versus being the background secret ‘meta’ structure of modern major corporations and more and more units of government like the US Department of Defense. The artist step at the start of the MaRS article is too short; so a set of SI 2 initiative development ‘101’ basics is something I want to nail down in products like the TBD Municipal Strategic Management Guide.

However, there is a TON of ways to do innovation and strategy. The McKinsey “Seven Steps” and more recent article Six problem-solving mindsets for very uncertain times are places to learn about concepts behind the StratGen  Solution Design SI 2 Component. The point of the SI 2 Lab is to cope, coordinate, and maneuver as best we can and adopt the best tools and mindset we can as new Strategy Innovators. When it comes to ‘getting our heads around’ X, Y, or Z challenges, solution, and outcome options and combinations today, we need each other and there are only so many people willing and able to tackle the issue of establishing resilience and then sustainability where we live: Our Municipalities.

The SWOT analysis is actually an okay starting point because it’s a tool many are familiar with and there is a deep dive element to SWOT that relates to the discovery aspect that relates to the Front End of Strategic Innovation and Create, Spread, Accelerate, and Intercept quadrants of SI 2 Maneuvering. Getting determined about our Opportunity Departure Points and being brave about thoughtful risk and shaping the X Factor Future are really basic ideas of entrepreneurship that have application in multiple domains. 

In the SI 2 Lab we connect these Strategy Innovators and municipalities ready to do new as Human Ecosystems. So, what is national, what is state level, and what is local get a strategic innovation’ upgrade by mixing strategic and innovation issues differently than how tech only innovation ecosystems and manufacturing clusters work.

What SI 2 Members Get

SI 2 Economy: Intellectual Capital + Social Synergy economy of scope and scale. Political Economy.

The RFI / RFP Strategic Innovation Pipeline Revolution

‘Log In’ Municipal Strategic Innovation Consulting and Human Ecosystem

SI 2 Lab Collections

There are two main types of SI 2 Lab groups; similar to a Facebook Group or LinkedIn Group… except the SI 2 Lab is a Human Ecosystem supported by a Management Consulting for Public Good organization. Expect a parallel national impact 501c3 nonprofit to launch in the future as a nonprofit allows for additional strategic innovation public good options:

1) Synergy Groups: Synergy Groups are usually topical or regional. Innovation ecosystem or innovation clusters are often regional with very specific sector themes. That’s limiting. Strategy Innovators may have domain specializations; but are global system thinkers who can imagine the Civilization Health of their municipality having dependencies on other municipalities, states, the nation, and the planet.

The third category of SI 2 Lab Synergy Groups are Mastermind Groups. Mastermind Groups are for individuals, organizations, municipalities, and regions to put our Solution Design Arena Calls where other SI 2 Lab Members join for SI 2 Dynamism around a set of proposed challenges, solutions, and outcomes initially detailed with an SI 2 Maneuvering workshop. An Solution Design Arena does not turn off after one or several webinars and other events. The Solution Design Arena stays live until the more desirable strategic innovation outcome is at hand.

Solution Providers

Entrepreneurs welcome. While being B Corp or Benefit Corp isn’t required, you’ll be asked how resilience, adaptation, and sustainability are part of your business model and what you think of JEDI-WW and EESG.

SI 2 Lab Collections

SI 2 Lab Collections are collections of Synergy Groups. There can be a limit on the number of SI 2 Lab Synergy Groups; but that’s why to use Mighty Networks. Mighty Networks does not constrain the limits of the first Human Ecosystem, the SI 2 Lab, either.

The SI 2 Lab Collections:

EESG: Economic, Environment, Society, and Governance

SI 2 Lab Dynamism

SI 2 Lab Mastermind Groups

Unity Future

90/1000

90/1000 is about the SI 2 Lab startup phase. There is no magic to it. I created the first Human Ecosystem, with Mighty Networks tech and their own excellent version of Intellectual Capital + Social Synergy, being the SI 2 Lab. In 90 days we want 1000 members minimum. The SI 2 Lab early adopter members will want to help me pull in more and more qualified members to get to more of a critical mass of 1000 members.

At first there will be more of the lab structure ’skeleton' and less content and just a few members. But in order to achieve the SI 2 Dynamism as to the lab, we will want to put in some sweat equity to help build up the human element and the corresponding content and overall value these potential Strategy Innovators can contribute. Yes, I will be doing my part.

Thanks,

Grant Millin

Strategy Innovator, StratGen CEO, and SI 2 Lab Ecosystem Executive 

About the Strategic Innovation 2.0 (SI 2) Lab

Municipal Strategic Management

Municipal Strategic Management sounds like the most boring and painful subject imaginable; until we intervene with a tool like SI 2 Maneuvering and assess local challenges with a game change model like SI 2 Municipal Strategic Management Connecting Dots. Out local governments cannot do everything alone. However, the places where we live — Our Municipalities — are where markets and voters are... when you give that a pause. We should be good at self-governing at this point, we should pray, as America's 250th birthday approaches on July 4, 2026. We also have amazing tools and a space to cope, coordinate, and maneuver with the SI 2 Lab. The SI 2 Lab is where we can explore being strategists and innovators, or Strategy Innovators, when it comes to our greatest challenges while connecting across the nation and rethinking our municipalities as Human Ecosystems versus just cities, towns, and counties with geographic limits.

The SI 2 Municipal Strategic Management Connecting Dots model is simply a visual to imagine these places where we all live — Our Municipalities — as being as valuable as possible; and the reality is our cities, towns, and counties are where people, nature, and economics need to coexist and flourish.

SI Lab Basics

Stay tuned for the SI Lab launch November 2023!

According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Business and Management an innovation ecosystem supports initiative emergence, competition, coevolution, and resilience among multiple actors. There is absolutely zero reason why the ecosystem context cannot start with multiple municipalities today given the macro nature of strategy that establishes resilience and then sustainability. In a pure commercial entrepreneurial context, municipalities are markets.

In a public good sense municipalities are where we live. Development, use of, and performance feedback from tools like a Municipal Strategic Management Guidebook and a Civilization Health Index for municipal performance practice standard baseline and assessment mean a group of Strategy Innovators from multitude discipline with common interest in municipal performance can share insight, gain support for additional initiatives of their own, and more readily ‘compare notes’ transparently on a range of existing issues from economic development to public safety; while we dive into the emergent space of resilience and finally establish sustainability.

Why the SI 2 Lab Now

The National Leadership Network was a great idea for pulling together people who like to help our municipalities succeed. We need something more to make our municipalities and consequently states and the nation more resilient and then sustainable. 

Along with being the first Human Ecosystem (more than an innovation ecosystem); the SI 2 Lab is an association of Strategy Innovators.

Strategy Innovators find the High Magnitude Truth / High Magnitude Value ‘thread’ — or Future Story — in challenges, solutions, and outcomes that others cannot or will not; and add empathy, an ethic, and the corresponding genius. Thread the needle; get ahead of the curve; and take the high ground with SI 2 Dynamism. SI 2 Dynamism is available to transform energy potential (e.g.; resources) and leadership work potential into sustainable multidomain value.

The SI 2 Lab Big Purpose

SI 2 Lab members cope, coordinate, and maneuver together… supported with the leadership possibilities of the StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 Platform (SI 2). We mix up the best tools in strategy and innovation; confront challenges, develop solutions, and dissect outcomes... and become Strategy Innovators using practices of high performing leaders and organizations like Open Innovation.

Strategic Innovation is what Apple did to become the first multi-trillion dollar corporation. NASA mixed strategy and innovation differently to visit the moon and become a platform leader in the science and technology innovation ecosystem. That’s Strategic Innovation 1.0.

Now we need to reapply big ideas about strategy and innovation issues with new purpose; because we have the right space to maneuver and do new: the SI 2 Lab. That’s Strategic Innovation 2.0. The SI 2 Lab is the first Human Ecosystem dedicated to establishing resilience and then sustainability where we live: Our Municipalities.

Why the SI 2 Lab Now

Modernization of Congress (MODCON) is a real thing; at least in the sense of yet another strategic report. Yea!

I had a role in seeing the first female Speaker of the US House of Representatives in 2006 and part of the payoff for that is the 117th Session of the US House of Representatives Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress final report. There’s one for the 116th session as well and comparing the two reports is one starting point.

As of February 2, 2023 the House Administration Committee set up a MODCON subcommittee. Of course those Members of Congress and any other MODCON players will be asked to join the SIL Lab MODCON Synergy Group.

There isn’t a special immediate need for me to add more insight to what the MODCON program is about or what the current state of affairs is. That doesn’t mean leaders from across the nation in different sectors should not break down the MODCON reports and each of us take on some tasks. Inviting the MODCOM committee members and anyone else in Congress to join the SI Lab MODCON Synergy Group is a major move in and of itself. An initiative charter is another step.

SI Lab Membership

More to follow

The SI Lab Agenda

The Strategic Innovation 2.0 (SI 2) Lab only charges $25 a month for basic membership and $195 a year. We’re going to use high level thinking and an accessible high performance platform to cope with real world issues in as many US municipalities as possible. Because it’s amazing how antiquated and unproductive municipal strategic management is in too many cases. And we need to dial in on winning high performance municipalities and spread those insights… fast, effectively, and efficiently.

We should hope our municipalities can manage finances. But how about getting young people interested in public service roles like law enforcement and municipal leadership versus a whole generating looking at mainly building AI apps and filling up the metaverse with content?

Coping with an obsolescent municipal approach to system issues like public safety, public health, economic development, overall governance — and declining basic municipal real world performance on issues like homelessness and crime — are benefits to look into when you hear a term like strategic innovation for the first time. Is strategic innovation just for Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft? No. We need a NASA for municipal performance. StratGen offers that Opportunity Departure Point.

Strategic Innovation 1.0

Whether it’s the Atlantic story The Age of Social Media Is Ending or 60 Minutes’ Social media's role in America's polarized political climate, the 'techno-democratic optimism’ around 2011 with the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street… has transformed in something. People still use the Internet to foster Liberal Democracy foundations like social capital and a shared ethic. But what people think logical and ethical means to their ends has lot of input and output quality variables. Logic means premise. An ethic is just whatever someone believes.

Terms like Social Capital and Intellectual Capital have a possibly greater role than social media and intellectual property as we enter the remainder of the 21st Century. The remainder of the 21st Century requires minds that pull together the best of what humanity has come up with so far for increased public good value; versus profitable consumption.

The Strategic Innovation Lab (SI Lab) is an entrepreneurial ecosystem and an innovation ecosystem. That’s less complex than it sounds; but we can allow coping with complexity as well as achievement through working with ‘collisions’ between differing challenges, solutions, and outcomes in a more skillful, open-minded way in the SI Lab.

An entrepreneurial ecosystem and/or an innovation ecosystem is about identifying resources, ideas, and creating a forum to connect to and manage subject area challenges, solutions, and outcomes. If ‘problem-solving’ is a better leadership term for some, that’s okay. However, value creation, strategist, and innovator skills seem to be about both diverging and breaking out the many interpretations of how to go from an unmet need to a desirable outcome. And then converging on the critical path elements to formulate, manage, and achieve the outcome.

You’ll see the actual topics in the SI Lab Synergy Groups are not just about entrepreneurship (or intrapreneurship) or innovation. That’s because being adaptable about where your subject matter expertise is at and looking for ‘X Factor’ combinations in possibly domains that currently seem unrelate is part of genius. And why wouldn’t something called the Strategic Innovation Lab include as forum called the Genius Development Synergy Group? Keep in mind genius development among those who are commonly disenfranchised is a substantial equity premium.

Instead of worrying about the steps for creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem with high venture capital returns; or a pharmaceutical innovation ecosystem like the one that developed COVID 19 vaccines; or an space and earth science innovation ecosystem like NASA, the ideas of entrepreneurship, innovation, and ecosystems do not need to have huge infrastructure development steps. Because the SI Lab is anHuman Ecosystem that allows for public good oriented innovation and entrepreneurship around one of our most valuable assets: our municipalities.

The idea that resources and intellectual capital mix together and collide as high value products with great revenue outcomes in entrepreneurial ecosystems and innovation ecosystems is not a new one. However, until the SI Lab and Mighty Networks (MN) Spaces cultural software the democratization of high value Human Ecosystems was not an option. Human Ecosystems are about public good outcomes and meeting human, environmental, and economic needs versus pure profit.

Synergy Groups

Synergy Groups are subject matter teams that can be for subject matter experts (SMEs), but more importantly spaces and work groups that allow imagination and genius outcomes to surface because non-SME SI Lab members have 'information and insight rights’ to any of these and other SI Lab Open Human Ecosystems.

Essentials for Human Ecosystem Synergy

Along with the genius of Mighty Networks Spaces cultural software the SI Lab uses, the SI Lab is about taking the best ideas on productive Intellectual Capital - Social Capital interactions that help define what Strategic Innovation can be. For a innovation ecosystem or entrepreneurial ecosystem to function as to getting the best from people, one would think there’s a baseline of what productivity means for actual humans. Thankfully the US Surgeon General has shared a framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being that isn't something just made up but is based on extensive research.

The Five Essentials for Human Ecosystem Synergy are based on the US Surgeon General’s model. The SI Lab experience isn’t guaranteed to make your career and the rest of your life perfect, but a Human Ecosystem should be a space that is about substantial outcomes like improving our municipal experiences as well as how to make the work behind those outcomes more than bearable but part of the human dimension of Civilization Health. We need to be healthy and do work in healthy ways with tangible wellness outcomes to land at a Sustainability 2.0 future in 2030 and 2050... for the sake of young people that are just getting going in life today. They need us to pave the way! We have to set up that Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Wellness (JEDI-W) dimension today if there’s to be a better version of society, environmental stewardship, and a new Ethical Logic behind economics. 

About SI Lab

First, I am more than happy to discuss setting up a StratGen Human Ecosystem for municipalities, nonprofits, and other enties where the membership is free to your constituency.

As someone with significant business education and in other disciplines but living in a region of the United States with little meaningful opportunity that match my interests and capabilities I had to create my own innovation ecosystem: The Strategic Innovation Lab (SI Lab). If you have never heard of an innovation or entrepreneurial ecosystem, that’s sort of okay… but it’s also a sign that current leaders do not feel the need to share a new direction in strategy and innovation… or they are unskilled, experience overwhelm, and experience Failure of Imagination.

It has been very recent that municipalities have begun to take on issues like sustainability and now racism as part of their internal and external strategy. One of the key techniques for engaging communities in transformation strategy is a branded ‘open innovation’ community strategy campaign. The municipality, a quasi government metropolitan planning organization, chamber of commerce, university, and/or nonprofit shares a bold vision about a challenge like broadband deployment and there’s some civic engagement. Our local Federal Sustainable Communities Initiative here in the Asheville area during the Obama Administration was called GroWNC. While I was a GroWNC consortium member and archived a lot of the GroWNC work, the website Gro-WNC.org has been deleted. So across the nation these command and economic development strategy campaigns come and go and our outcomes during a time of unprecedented challenges waver.

While the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been in effect for over 30 years Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), the ADA and PwDs have very weak presence in supposedly progressive American communities like Asheville. PwDs are all genders, races, sexual orientations, and creeds. Human Security is the term that encompasses the dignity and human needs of people of color, PwDs, women, men, children, the elderly, and LGBTQ citizens in an increasingly risky world. How are we really de-risking our environmental, social, governing, and economic risks for constituencies faster, better, and more often over compressed timeframes? What’s needed?

Human Security is the new outcome and Strategic Innovation has the breadth of capability to formulate and achieve aims while generating the required new and renewing value in a time of planetary risk.

The corporate version of Strategic Innovation is about changing the rules of the game for any given sector and creating new market platforms combining people, technology, funding, marketing, education, and a future shaping consultive practice. Progressive leaders should be willing to work in the SI Lab and the demonstration Strategic Innovation Platform called Unity Future. We need to experiment while being skilled in starting up Strategic Innovation wins. Much of government isn’t ready for these time... and society, the environment, and current economics demand answer.

It’s not surprising there isn’t the executive development practice needed for government and nonprofit leadership today. A new practice is needed. The SI Lab is an example of a StratGen Human Ecosystem. Human Ecosystems are just one example of the StratGen Strategic Innovation Way.

The best way to sum up what the SI Lab does is opening up the difficult transformation work needed in communities today while making process more transparent. Thomas Edison’s invention lab in Menlo Park, NJ was an innovative space, but not especially for public issues. The modern electric light bulb and electrical generation were for public consumption, but today we are working with low odds as to successfully adding Climate Protection to civilization issues like energy use. We need a different leadership platform and a way to reskill for this kind of solution generation.

There will be a national impact 501c3 in the future that expands on the SI Lab work.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that the lack of defense as the 9/11 attack developed was the result of four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, a number of foreign nationals were taking pilot training in the U.S. and raised suspicion by being uninterested in learning how to land safely. The 9/11 Commission found that this failure to "connect the dots" and imagine what was being planned was an important contributing factor to the September 11 attacks, stating "the most important failure [concerning the 9/11 attacks] was one of imagination." 

The term Failure of Imagination should be used more often in more situations related to our many great challenges. My consultancy, StratGen, helps leaders shape the future. Part of the StratGen Strategic Innovation Way practice is about generating antidotes to Failure of Imagination by solving for the X Factor Future using relatively simple tools.

Strategic Innovation was first discussed openly in a 1997 MIT Sloan Management Review article. When combined with the United Nations term Human Security, many activists should feel reassured there is a new platform in development that covers a lot of social, economic, and environmental space and yet professionalizes the transformation work. Corporations don’t need the transformation power of Strategic Innovation today nearly as much as municipalities, states, the US Government, and nonprofit partners.

So instead of waiting for government or another nonprofit to create the ‘Edison invention lab for human security’... until after even more time and opportunity has departed... StratGen provides these Human Ecosystems that form Strategic Innovation Platforms like Unity Future right now.

The SI Lab Agenda

Coming Soon

SI Lab Membership

Coming Soon

About Grant Millin

More to follow 

Synergy Groups

Coming Soon

MSI

Municipal Strategic Innovation...