Turn Ideas into Action Published: Jan 24, 2019 According to Faisal Hoque, author of The Power of Convergence, the following five steps detail how to analyze and shift investments among technology portfolios to strike a balance between those that deliver stability and those that support agility. Step 1: Review your company’s strategic position, as well as your business strategy and technology strategy formulation activities. Are marketplace and competitive analyses part of these activities? Is the role of business technology prominent in these analyses? Is strategic experimentation used to enable a better understanding of the roles served by business technology investment in acquiring and sustaining favorable market positions? Step 2: Determine how both business and technology investments are handled in your company’s strategic planning and budgeting activities. To what extent do investment levels across operating units reflect the role that business technology actually serves in enabling strategic positions? To what extent do investment levels across staff or support units reflect the role business technology serves in enabling these units to accomplish their mission? Are the baselines for such analyses founded on historical trends, industry benchmarks, or carefully selected (that is, strategically an operationally comparable) peer groups? Step 3: Assess the existence and maturity of business/technology management capabilities across the enterprise. Which technology capabilities—given the role that business technology serves in enabling your firm’s strategic posture—must be maintained at world-class levels? Has sufficient investment in business/technology management capabilities occurred at an enterprise level and within each business unit? Step 4: Evaluate your enterprise’s organizational synchronization. Are your business strategy and strategic position well communicated and clearly understood across the organization? Are your enterprise’s business strategies reflective of exploitative strategic actions, exploratory strategic actions, or both? What roles do your business/technology investments play in enabling these strategic actions? Step 5: Develop an appropriate mix of the kinds of business technologies needed to advance your firm’s strategic agenda. Technology—and investments in new technology—will become a significant tool for the enterprise’s executive team. Excerpted, with position of the publisher, from The Power of Convergence by Faisal Hoque. Copyright 2011, Faisal Hoque. Published by American Management Association. For more information, visit ww.amacombooks.org