Strategy Advisory Group

We draw on cutting edge academic research, business management tools, and systems development expertise to help socially-focused organizations and entrepreneurs catalyze their impact on development in India.

The Strategy Advisory Group (SAG) offers three kinds of services:

Strategy: What are effective ways of inciting inclusive growth or maximizing the impact of social ventures and public programs? The activities that can most effectively contribute to reaching these goals are not often obvious, and the existing knowledge is dispersed among various sources. We help organisations to refine their assumptions about “what works”; identify new research programs; and minimize the risks of wasted resources or counterproductive interventions.

Implementation: Translating goals into action, managing mulitple stakeholders, forging the right partnerships, or ensuring effective performance feedback can be challenging for any organization, and especially for those operating in the development sector. Our team provides management consulting services tailored to the needs of the development sector. We assess organisations’ implementation practices, from business processes to performance measurement, to ensure they will accomplish their broader objectives.

Knowledge management: Development entrepreneurs and non-profit organisations operate on the cutting edge of development, learning as they go to address complex problems. They also often have significant reporting requirements to donors, clients, and the general public. We help clients to effectively store and leverage data, analysis and insights while improving their ability to disseminate findings within their internal teams and the larger community.

Our most recent clients include:

ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth
The ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth has asked SAG to assess its work and advise the Foundation’s President on best practices while working closely with its strategic partners in five focus areas: financial services, health, education, civil society and environment. The group’s areas of support include an in-depth analysis and risk evaluation of overall strategy, recommendations to improve implementation practices, and development of a knowledge management system and communications platform.

Rural Innovations Network Nodal Assessment
The Rural Innovations Network (now VillGro) asked SAG to assess the organization's “nodal programme” which aims to generate excitement about rural innovation among the next generation of social entrepreneurs through partnerships with educational institutions and industry organizations. Through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with key stakeholders and beneficiaries, as well as analysis of comparative organizations, SAG assessed each aspect of the "hub and spoke" programme and recommended a suite of improvements along with a preliminary implementation plan.

Keywords: strategic planning, organizational development, knowledge management, impact assessment, management consulting, development sector consulting, innovation, rural markets, strategy and change

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