How can an organization make a strategy actionable and accessible to stakeholders? Is it possible to chart a course that is flexible but also anchored in reality? And maybe most importantly, can you write a strategy that people will actually want to read, and avoid the one-page-too-long PDF?

When we started developing Open Supply Hub’s latest three year strategy, we tried to do all three. Our final product was a 40+ page PDF document and we did use some unavoidable jargon. But because of a meaningful process, anchored in community engagement and guidance from our Board of Directors and a critical consulting partner, our strategy is an accessible, actionable and flexible North Star for our organization and community.

To that end, and to make the strategy even more accessible, I’m pleased to share some highlights and pillars with you, our community, in a short blog post.

And because we’re all about transparency enabling better and more efficient work, I’ve added some quick tips on the process at the end, for those embarking on similar efforts.

Let’s dive in!

First off, an updated mission and vision for our organization:

How will we achieve this?

Our new strategy is all about scale. Ultimately OS Hub is a flywheel – the more data, the more users, the more valuable the platform. You can visualize it like this:

So what is scale for OS Hub, specifically?

1. Scaling our database. This speaks to the sheer amount of data. Our database holds nearly a quarter million OS IDs currently – we aim to reach 1 million by the end of 2024, and 5 million by the end of 2026, drawing us nearer and nearer to an OS ID for every supply chain location.
2. Scaling our product. While we continuously make improvements to OS Hub, we’ve honed in on the highest priority improvements to help us reach the size we’re going for. Things like making our data contribution process really easy, introducing ways to make searches on our platform more efficient and insightful, and leveraging cutting-edge technology to continuously improve how we identify production locations and match them in our database.
3. Scaling our impact. As an enabling technology, at times we are removed from the impact our platform has – our users use the data to effect change. But we’ve observed over the last few years that sometimes opportunities to bring organizations together to collaborate on issues, backed up by our data and that of others, is too powerful to ignore. We’re planning to invest more resources in research, data science and partnerships to identify and promote opportunities for action. We’ll be testing out some new programs around this soon – stay tuned and let us know if this is something you’d be interested in participating in!

In order to achieve all this – we need you, our community! How can you get involved?

1. Share supply chain data for free on OS Hub
2. Use our free, universal IDs to make your data really easy to work with and share
3. Make use of this fast-growing dataset in your work. Need inspiration? Check out our library of case studies, which you can filter by stakeholder type to find the ones most relevant to you. Or want to explore collaborating more deeply on research, analysis, or impact programs rooted in our data? Please reach out to our team and we’re happy to design with you!

What did a three year strategy process look like for an organization like ours?

There are entire books out there that can walk you through this process, but a few steps/tips that made a big difference for us:

• We established a board committee who provided guidance, critical feedback, accountability and expertise along the way.
• We placed stakeholders at the center of strategy development, conducting dozens of interviews, surveying our community, and ensuring thoughtful analysis of all of this input became the backbone of our design.
• We conducted a landscape analysis, to ensure we had a strong, current sense of our place in the market, as the systems we work within are rapidly changing.
• We built a risk model and engaged with it heavily to interrogate our decisions.
• While it was not easy, we iterated on our vision, mission and theory of change over several months until we got to consensus across our team and board of directors. We accepted that this would not come in a few simple workshops and, in the end, it was worth it.
• As an organization that values openness at our core, the last thing we wanted was for this strategy to feel like it was built behind closed doors and then presented in its final version to our hard-working team. So we committed to bringing our entire organization along on the journey, creating various opportunities for sharing, feedback, and engagement with the process along the way.

I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for all who helped us get to this place as an organization and a public good. It is because of you that we had the foundation to build from and design our future. We can’t wait to see how our work together will change supply chains in the years to come.