3 Horizons: Effectively manage your innovation over time

What is the 3 Horizons method?

Popularized by the consulting firm McKinsey, the 3 Horizons method is now widely used in innovation, forecasting, and transformation initiatives.

It is based on a simple idea: to succeed, you need to be able to manage three time frames in parallel:

• Horizon 1: The present, i.e., the current activities that keep the organization going. This is what works today, but may run out of steam in the long run.
• Horizon 2: The transition, which includes emerging initiatives, pilot projects, and innovations currently being tested. This is the bridge between the present and the future.‍
• Horizon 3: The future, which corresponds to the long-term vision, disruptions, and new models that need to be invented to ensure the organization's sustainability.

This method provides teams with a concrete opportunity to project themselves onto these three horizons. They can then identify the actions to be taken for each time frame and consider the steps that will enable them to transition from the present to the future without disruption.

Why adopt the 3 Horizons method in your strategic thinking?

The 3 Horizons method offers a visual and structured framework that is tailored to your innovation and organizational transformation projects. Here is how you and your team can benefit from it:

1. A better perspective: This methodology forces you to step outside your daily operations and look at the long term. It helps you clarify your vision, give meaning to your actions, and unite your teams around a common goal.
2. Fewer gray areas in your vision of the future: By structuring your thinking across multiple horizons, you avoid focusing solely on the urgent issues of the present or, conversely, dreaming of a future that is disconnected from reality. The method promotes a balance between exploitation and exploration.
3. Greater anticipation and responsiveness: This method also allows you to identify weak signals, emerging trends, and potential risks of disruption early on. It gives teams greater visibility and better control over their context.
4. Valuing collective intelligence: Throughout this collaborative reflection process, everyone can easily express their vision, ideas, and concerns. This promotes engagement, creativity, and ownership of the actions implemented by the teams.
5. Clearer and more flexible project management: By distinguishing between short, medium, and long-term objectives, it becomes easier to prioritize your projects, allocate your resources, and manage your transformation in a pragmatic way.

How can you use Klaxoon's 3 Horizons template to innovate more effectively?

Choosing a visual representation

Our ready-to-use 3 Horizons template offers three different ways to represent your organization's timeline:

• Curves that overlap over time, following the evolution of each horizon. The further away from the existing situation, the lower the Horizon 1 curve descends, and the closer to the long-term vision, the more the Horizon 3 curve gains importance.
• Curves that follow each other in stages, for a clearer representation of each of the three horizons.
• A 3x3 cell matrix that extends the possibilities of Horizon 3.

This allows you to choose the visual representation that best suits your needs and your team's approach.

Brainstorming and collective mapping

On your Board, regardless of the visual representation you choose, three distinct spaces represent each of your three horizons.

1. Start by brainstorming about your Horizon 1. Each participant adds ideas about current activities, products, or practices that should be maintained or optimized.
2. Then, move on to your Horizon 3. Again, everyone contributes their ideas, imagining your ideal future, disruptive innovations, potential new markets, or models to explore.
3. Finally, complete the section dedicated to your Horizon 2. After identifying the starting and the end point, work together to define the transition projects, the experiments to be launched, and the skills to be developed to achieve this.

During your brainstorming session, make sure to use the color code specific to each horizon (red for Horizon 1, blue for Horizon 2, and green for Horizon 3).