Where are we going: Our Outcome
We are moving toward a more open, equitable, and regenerative world. We are unleashing our human ingenuity through collaboration, entrepreneurship, challenge innovation, and ecosystems.
Our work supports a new generation of leaders. Strategic Doing practitioners are committed to the hard, heady work of transforming our world. They guide complex collaborations by mastering our oldest technology: the conversation.
We are explorers on the path to what's next: designing new organizations, policies, and systems. If our work inspires you, discover our many touchpoints, and join us.
How we will get there: our Credo
In 2011, a group of Strategic Doing practitioners from all over the United States gathered at a public park near Purdue University. They composed a credo, a set of beliefs that drive our work.
1. We believe we have a responsibility to build a prosperous, sustainable future for ourselves and future generations.
2. No individual, organization, or place can build that future alone.
3. Open, honest, focused, and caring collaboration among diverse participants is the path to accomplishing clear, valuable, shared outcomes.
4. We believe in doing, not just talking -- and in behavior in alignment with our beliefs.
Numbers don't lie
Strategic Doing teaches people how to form collaborations quickly, move them toward measurable outcomes and make adjustments along the way. In today’s world, collaboration is essential to meet the complex challenges we face.
Strategic Doing enables leaders to design and guide new networks that generate innovative solutions. It is a new strategy discipline that is lean, agile and fast—just what organizations, communities and regions need to survive and thrive.
Elizabeth Taylor, a NASA engineer, formed a team to form collaborations among life scientists at NASA. A Purdue team designed a two day workshop to define opportunities to collaborate. The workshop, held at Ames Research Center in California, involved over 60 NASA life scientists from research centers across the country. The workshop generated practical projects on which scientists could collaborate.
The Purdue Office of Engagement, the Purdue Polytechnic, and Purdue Discovery Park established the Agile Strategy Lab to continue the development and deployment of Strategic Doing. Morrison, director of the Lab, retired from Purdue in 2019. He moved the operations of the Lab to the University of North Alabama to leverage that university’s expertise in online education.
Scholars and practitioners at the University of Oregon received training in Strategic Doing. The practice has been embraced in various locations across campus. Three Institute Fellows at the University Of Oregon continue to develop the practice.
Lockheed presented a challenge: Design a technology roadmap for the deployment of condition-based maintenance across the Navy’s Aegis destroyer fleet. In 6 months we delivered by developing an ecosystem for Lockheed with 20 outside companies.
University of Puerto Rico partnered with Purdue and the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust to bring Strategic Doing to the island after hurricane Maria. Over 40 scholars and practitioners participated in training and then moved into communities to accelerate the rebuilding process.
The staff of the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement embraced Strategic Doing and trained staff members in the discipline. Jane Rogan with the Center has become a Fellow of the Institute.
As part of his national Bach tour, Yo-Yo Ma sponsored a series of community forums. He invited Morrison to lead a workshop. As he explained in the Foreword to our book, “I was a witness to and participant in this approach when I met Ed Morrison in Youngstown, Ohio, working with a group of socially committed citizens, each determined to work to reinvigorate a once thriving community. In one short hour he had us each identify and unlock our assets, come up with a plausible group plan, and determine a course of action moving forward, agreeing to meet again 30 days from that moment.”
With multiple trainings beginning in 2016, the Iowa City Area Development Corporation became a hub for Strategic Doing practitioners.
Purdue President Martin Jischke provided vital support at Purdue beginning in 2005. The book received strong reviews from both scholars and practitioners. Yo-Yo Ma wrote the Foreword. It reads in part, “”I’ve been waiting for this book all my life…Strategic Doing is precisely what we need at this moment. In a fast-changing world, filled with disruption, with institutions not equipped to absorb or deal with the pace of change, here is a way of thinking and acting, here is an agile strategy that makes collaboration take place at the necessary speed for social good.” Buy Now
Forward Oklahoma City, the strategy that Morrison designed in 1993, launched its 6th five year investment cycle in 2020. Over 25 years, average wages increased 111% and bank deposits increased by $24.3 billion.