Our Process

Unlock Potential, Release Possibilities

 

For your organization’s future, how you manage change is as important as knowing what changes to make. Every journey starts somewhere, and you can’t get off “Go” unless you know where that somewhere is.

Spark Growth’s seasoned research, business, and technology experts change the game for organizations recognizing the urgent need for transformation but don’t know where or how to start. Our team has proven success in helping clients:

  • Navigate the process from start to finish
  • Identify and map customer needs and opportunities for innovation
  • Reskill for workplace and industry success
  • Integrate existing systems and processes with optimized technologies
  • Develop actionable, agile approaches that bring long-term success
 

We evaluate clients’ needs and opportunities, using data from the latest developments and field research across disciplines and markets to provide strategic relations and engagement advisory and consulting services. Then we work alongside our clients to advise, implement, and iterate as necessary the improved business strategies focusing on growth, equity, and accountability.

Sara with a Flipchart

As part of our hands-on approach, we start with a Needs and Possibilities Evaluation. What will sustainable growth look like tomorrow? Next month? Next year? In a decade? We Think Bigger, looking at the geographic, social, market, and temporal context of your business or organization. And we plan ahead.

Process Overview

Stage One – Needs and Possibilities Evaluation

The Needs and Possibilities Evaluation is a six-week process comprised of three two-week sprints. The initial review and evaluation process reviews what you have, what you want to achieve, and what potential courses of action are available. The evaluation provides an outside expert perspective and objective cross-sectional review accomplishing the following:

Identifying opportunities and gaps in the current strategy, plans, and resources
Finding and strategically addressing “invisible” opportunities and challenges
Reviewing status and potential resources for current priorities: access to capital, strategic partnerships, talent, and additional prospects to new client pipeline

Success in the initial Needs and Possibilities Evaluation is marked by:

Suggested courses of action for identified opportunities and gaps in strategy, plans, and resources
Initial referrals and resources to meet defined needs across core areas of development
Clearly defined approach on how to best work together for Your company’s growth and expansion goals

The questions go beyond the cursory principles of business development and generalizable checklists to get to your business development. Spark Growth looks for the unseen, “invisible” factors to identify your state of the business; render a clear picture of your goals and objectives; determine your needs, assets, liabilities, capabilities, and possibilities; deliver on our established predictors of success, and generate a report that allows you to act on our research.

Stage Two – Advisory: Strategic Relations and Engagement/ Consulting Business Growth

During Stage Two, Spark Growth works with your team to build upon results and discoveries, the objectives and goals outlined in Stage One – Needs and Possibilities Evaluation. This process is a minimum of three months in duration and can be extended as necessary according to client needs.

This process provides ongoing advisory guidance, connections, resources, and feedback. Our experience in innovation consulting has taught us how easy it is to fall in love with what you believe your audience wants and needs. As metric-driven innovators, we ask questions, learn daily, and make adjustments. We research, assess context, and seek additional input to disprove or validate assumptions. Asking better questions, we work with clients to identify answers for informed short- and long-term decision-making.

We look with you at your big vision and help you answer: What is my priority today? What step can I accomplish now and deliver today? What concrete action can I take that will have the most impact? What is the most sustainable and productive path to using my resources for my greater purpose? Knowing your goals and objectives allows us to review, adjust, and recommit at regular intervals.

At Spark Growth, we keep consistent progress front and center through constructive scaffolding, helping you think bigger, keep it simple, and make it happen.

Assessment, guidance in understanding the possibilities, identifying metrics

Value definition, prioritization, identifying funding sources, risk reduction

Managing expectations, impact determination, project guidance

Additional Details for each Scope of Work are developed in consensus with our clients and their objectives and desired outcomes. These are refined during our iterative development processes. What we discover is often counterintuitive to initial expectations.

Advisory: Strategic Relations And Engagement
Identify | Engage | Develop | Implement
Strategy, Business Model Innovation, Ecosystem and Network Strategy Development, New Market Expansion: Dual-use and Soft-landing

Consulting: Projects And Programs
Opportunity Assessments, Experimental and Applied Research, Feasibility Studies, Program and Curriculum Development, Experience and Event Design, and Impact Studies