You leave the IP strategy meeting agreeing the strategy is “comprehensive.” Two months later you couldn’t say what the strategy has committed to.
That’s not a memory problem. The strategy didn’t have anything in it specific enough to remember, it’s was never really a strategy to begin with.
The test is simple. After the meeting, can you finish this sentence three times: we are betting that … If you can those are your bets. If you can’t, you don’t have a strategy. You have coverage with a confident tone.
Most IP strategies fail this test. Not because the bets are wrong, it wouldn’t be a bet if it couldn’t be wrong. They fail because the bets are never named. Decisions are made and nowhere in the process does anyone say out loud here is what we are betting on, and here is what we are betting against. Without that, nothing in the strategy can be falsified. Like any great work of fiction it is a simulation of the truth, not an accurate report of what is true.
Naming the bets is uncomfortable, which is why it gets skipped. It forces specifics. We are betting that our process advantage holds for three product cycles. These are statements someone can disagree with. They expose where the technical team and the commercial team have different mental models. They make it visible when one of them turns out to be wrong.
That visibility is the whole point. An IP strategy you can’t be wrong about isn’t a strategy, it’s avoiding taking a position that you can be held to.
So before your next IP strategy meeting, run the three-bets test on your current document. If you can finish we are betting that … three times from what’s written down, you’re in good shape. You will know when your bets are likely to pay out or when you’re in danger of going bust.