The Salmon strategy - how corporate innovation can help your company to navigate turbulent times

Kurt Verweire

By Kurt Verweire

Professor of Strategy

02 February 2024

Traditional strategic models focus on growth - and how to face up to the competition. But how do you respond to shocks and major shifts resulting from natural disasters, pandemics or geopolitical crises? Most companies have risk management procedures in place, but turbulence also comes with opportunities, next to risks. In his book on Strategy in Turbulent Times, Professor Kurt Verweire sets out 4 turbulence strategies that can help companies not only to survive but also to thrive.

Corporate innovation is one of four strategic options that companies have to deal with turbulence. In this strategy, companies add and incorporate a new business model while maintaining their core business.

Thumbnail video series Strategy in Turbulent Times

This strategy involves establishing new, fundamentally different business lines that operate independently. These ventures are very uncertain, as you don’t know whether they will become profitable. And there’s often a lot of tension between the core and those new units.

Thumbnail video series Strategy in Turbulent Times

The Salmon strategy - how corporate innovation can help your company to navigate turbulent times

In his book on Strategy in Turbulent Times, Professor Kurt Verweire sets out 4 turbulence strategies that can help companies not only to survive but also to thrive. In this video, he explains the Salmon strategy.

In his book, Kurt illustrates the corporate innovation strategy through real-world cases, such as Now Jobs which is a new business unit within the House of HR Group. Other examples are Scoot, a low-cost carrier in the Singapore Airlines Group, and Movil, a mobility service unit of Daimler and now Mercedes.

Kurt compares this turbulence strategy to the life of a salmon. Born in freshwater, it moves to the ocean – to salt water. Just as a salmon undergoes physical changes to adapt to its new environment, organisations embracing corporate innovation must transform and reinvent themselves to build new business lines successfully. Kurt highlights the need for a holistic transformation, encompassing cultural shifts, recruitment of new talent, and the development of a new strategy.

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Kurt Verweire

Kurt Verweire

Professor of Management Practice in Strategy