Three Horizons Framework for Strategic Growth Planning Training Course

Course overview

Many strategic plans concentrate on the current operating model and annual targets, leaving leaders without a disciplined way to fund, test and scale future growth. The Three Horizons Framework addresses this gap by separating Horizon 1 core-business performance, Horizon 2 emerging opportunities and Horizon 3 longer-term options. Participants learn to make growth choices visible: which initiatives protect today’s cash flow, which deserve staged investment, which assumptions require evidence, and when leadership should stop, pivot or scale an initiative.

This course teaches participants to build a practical Three Horizons portfolio rather than a slide-based innovation agenda. They will define horizon criteria, map initiatives by maturity and strategic uncertainty, assess opportunity attractiveness, identify capability gaps, set innovation ambition levels, and establish investment guardrails. The course connects the framework to portfolio management, scenario planning, OKRs, business cases, experimentation and governance. Participants also learn how to handle common tensions, including Horizon 1 leaders rejecting uncertain bets, Horizon 2 initiatives becoming stranded pilots, and Horizon 3 ideas being evaluated with inappropriate short-term financial metrics.

Instructor-led sessions combine worked examples, facilitated analysis and team workshops using a realistic growth-planning case. Participants apply templates in Microsoft Excel, Miro and Power BI to construct horizon maps, initiative scorecards, an investment allocation view and a review cadence. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with a Three Horizons Strategic Growth Portfolio Pack for a selected business unit, market, product line or service area, including prioritised initiatives, assumptions, measures, decision gates and a 90-day activation plan.

The course is designed for managers and professionals who contribute to growth strategy, transformation, innovation or portfolio decisions. It is especially valuable where an organisation must sustain a profitable core while responding to market disruption, changing customer needs, new technology or adjacent-market opportunities.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a Three Horizons map that classifies strategic initiatives by maturity, uncertainty and expected value horizon
• Define Horizon 1, Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 criteria tailored to a business unit’s market, operating model and growth ambition
• Evaluate opportunities using an initiative scorecard covering strategic fit, evidence strength, capability requirements and risk
• Build a horizon-based investment allocation model with funding ranges, stage gates and decision rights
• Develop testable assumptions and learning metrics for Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 initiatives
• Apply scenario planning to stress-test a strategic growth portfolio against market and technology shifts
• Design governance routines that separate core-performance reviews from emerging-business and option-creation reviews
• Produce a Three Horizons Strategic Growth Portfolio Pack with priorities, measures, owners and a 90-day action plan

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Strategy Managers — who must convert broad growth ambitions into a prioritised portfolio of initiatives
• Business Unit Leaders — who need to protect core performance while funding adjacent and future opportunities
• Innovation Managers — who must move experiments beyond isolated pilots into governed growth pathways
• Transformation Leaders — who need to sequence change initiatives across near-term operations and longer-term capability shifts
• Product Portfolio Managers — who must balance established offerings, extensions and new-market bets
• Corporate Development Professionals — who assess partnerships, acquisitions and venture options against strategic growth priorities

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have a working understanding of their organisation’s strategy, business model, key customers or markets, and current strategic initiatives. Experience contributing to annual planning, product planning, innovation, transformation or portfolio reviews is helpful, but not essential. Participants should be comfortable reading simple financial and performance measures such as revenue, margin, investment and growth rate. Basic Microsoft Excel familiarity is assumed for portfolio templates. No prior knowledge of the Three Horizons Framework, formal strategy qualification, Power BI expertise or advanced financial modelling is required. A complete beginner can attend and should expect guided practice with each tool and concept.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led briefings to establish the Three Horizons logic, followed by guided application to a realistic corporate growth case and participants’ own context. Teams build horizon maps in Miro, score initiatives in Microsoft Excel, and interpret portfolio signals through simple Power BI views. Facilitated debates simulate investment-committee decisions, requiring participants to defend funding, evidence and timing choices. Each day closes with a practical output that becomes part of the final portfolio pack. The final session converts the completed portfolio into a stakeholder engagement and 90-day implementation plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Framing strategic growth across three horizons

• Origins and purpose of the Three Horizons Framework
• Distinguishing core optimisation, adjacent growth and future options
• Horizon 1 value drivers and core-business performance measures
• Horizon 2 opportunity patterns and business-model extensions
• Horizon 3 options, uncertainty and strategic learning
• Common horizon traps and portfolio imbalance symptoms
• Defining organisational boundaries for a growth portfolio

Workshop: Participants map their selected initiatives onto an initial Three Horizons canvas and produce a first view of portfolio imbalance.

Day 2: Selecting and evaluating growth opportunities

• Strategic intent and growth ambition statements
• Opportunity sourcing from customer, market and technology signals
• Initiative scoring criteria for strategic fit and attractiveness
• Evidence-strength assessment for uncertain opportunities
• Capability-gap analysis across people, process, technology and partners
• Assumption mapping and critical uncertainty identification
• Risk-adjusted comparison of horizon initiatives

Workshop: Using an opportunity scorecard, participants assess a set of growth initiatives and produce a ranked evidence-and-capability assessment.

Day 3: Designing the strategic growth portfolio

• Portfolio balance by horizon, market and strategic theme
• Investment allocation principles for core, emerging and exploratory work
• Stage-gate funding and real-options investment logic
• Initiative dependency mapping and capability sequencing
• Scenario planning for market disruption and demand shifts
• Microsoft Excel portfolio models and allocation calculations
• Power BI portfolio dashboards for leadership review

Workshop: Teams build a horizon-based investment allocation model, test it against two scenarios and produce a recommended portfolio view.

Day 4: Governance, measures and decision making

• Horizon-specific KPIs and leading versus lagging indicators
• Learning metrics for experiments and early-stage ventures
• Decision gates for continue, pivot, pause, partner and stop choices
• Governance roles, investment forums and decision rights
• OKR alignment across core operations and growth initiatives
• Managing Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 resource conflicts
• Portfolio review cadences and escalation triggers

Workshop: Participants design a governance rhythm and decision-gate scorecard for their portfolio, including owners, measures and escalation points.

Day 5: Activating the portfolio and leading adoption

• Communicating horizon choices to executives and operational leaders
• Building strategic narratives around investment trade-offs
• Stakeholder mapping for portfolio sponsorship and delivery support
• Miro visualisation techniques for horizon roadmaps
• ISO 56002 innovation-management guidance and portfolio alignment
• Ninety-day activation planning and early decision milestones
• Portfolio refresh triggers and annual planning integration

Workshop: Participants complete and present their Three Horizons Strategic Growth Portfolio Pack, then produce a 90-day activation plan with stakeholder actions.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Miro, Microsoft Power BI, ISO 56002

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions