About Acorn Adaptive
Our Story
In a career leading and consulting teams in service management, business development, and go-to-market strategy; founder Elias Franz saw team after team struggling to offer new services...
Teams couldn't get to market fast enough. Leaders were out of sync on strategy or priorities. New offerings didn't gain the market traction they needed. Internal teams struggled to deliver on promises.
After over a decade solving these challenges, Elias established Acorn Adaptive in 2024 and began documenting the Root to Reach™ framework to guide organizations in portfolio innovation and go-to-market strategy.
What We Do
Business leaders are challenged to adapt what they offer and align how they provide for needs in today's rapidly-changing market.
Through workshops based on our Root to Reach™ framework, we guide clients to shape ideas into offerings and cultivate change to thrive in their markets.
We are based in Columbus, Ohio and provide virtual and on-site services to clients across the United States 9am-5pm ET, Monday through Friday, with flexibility for client needs.
Why We Do It
Acorn Adaptive's purpose is to cultivate good in our communities by enabling services that provide for people and thrive in their markets.
In each interaction with our community and clients, we strive to empower growing teams to adopt this same purpose within their own organizations.
Our Root to Reach™ framework and interactive workshops are the tools we use to pursue this.
About Root to Reach™
A Framework for Portfolio Innovation
To succeed, organizations need to effectively adapt what they provide and how they thrive when faced with change. The speed of change, alignment amongst stakeholders, and the complexity in their environment can become problematic in how effectively they adapt.
The Root to Reach™ framework is based on more than a decade of experience growing, providing, and offering services across varied industries, and offers adoptable solutions to these problems. In the face of change, uncertainty, and complexity, this framework guides effective adaptation of what an organization offers and how it succeeds in its purpose.
We refer to this adaptation toward changing market needs as 'portfolio innovation', which we explore through four fundamental concepts.
Fundamental Concepts:
Adaptive Guiding Principles
Define expected habits and importance to be applied in uncertain situations. Where rigid steps and process may break in uncertainty, guiding principles can allow teams and systems to adapt toward an outcome.
Go-to-Market Lifecycle
Adopt the stages, steps, and stakeholders that allow teams to start with ideas for innovation and grow them into new or changed offerings.
Offering Modeling
Define the types of decisions made to model the marketing strategy of an offering. Apply these decisions at the right place in the Go-to-Market Lifecycle and with the right stakeholders.
What Sets Root to Reach™ Apart?
Simple Visualizations Driving Adoptable Concepts:
To facilitate adoptability, the Root to Reach™ framework applies the concept of the portfolio to visualizations of a tree growing under the sunlight. Through the exploration of its fundamental concepts, the framework enables teams to be 'arborists' of the tree that represents their portfolios.
Inclusive Across Organizational Stakeholders:
Root to Reach™ balances the perspective of two key types of stakeholders within an organization: 1) those that anticipate or present what the organization can offer in the market and 2) those that prepare or supply what the organization brings to the market.
A Broader Approach To Innovation; Adaptable to Industry-Specific Disciplines:
'Go-to-market' has become a popular discipline regarding adapting to change in the market. In application however it can tend to focus on the launch of a specific offering and overwhelmingly on the stakeholders that anticipate and present in the market. Root to Reach™ offers a Go-to-Market Lifecycle and a place for further industry development, testing, or change-oriented disciplines to plug-in, but all with intentional connectivity back to the breadth of the overall portfolio strategy.
The Root to Reach™ Go-to-Market Lifecycle
Elias Franz
Founder
Elias is the founder of Acorn Adaptive and author of the Root to Reach™ framework. He has led and consulted teams for over a decade in the areas of service management, business development, and go-to-market strategy.
Forged by these experiences and realized through Acorn Adaptive, Elias carries an individual purpose to cultivate good in his community through establishing systems that provide for people and thrive in uncertainty.
Empower Your Team
Empower your team to shape ideas into offerings, accelerate innovation, and grow your business. Contact us today to learn more about planning a Root to Reach™ Foundations Workshop for your team.
Contact Us