Effective leaders and the teams around them need to
focus on four horizons for decision-making:
1. Day to day management, efficiency
and firefighting
2. Effective implementation and incremental
innovation over the medium term of 1-3 years
3. Developing more radical options – including in
very different fields – that could become mainstream
in 3-20 years
4. Taking account of generational timescales
– particularly in relation to climate change and issues
like pensions
Innovation matters for all but one of these
horizons – but it is bound to matter most for the
latter two, and for organisations that have a sense of
their responsibilities to the future.