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ABSTRACT"Instead of being really good at doing some particular thing, companies must be really good at learning how to do new things" [1]. This ability to do new things involves both the identification and the mastery of the next 'new thing' as well as the ability to align the rest of the company with this new direction. This paper focuses on the alignment of innovation activities with the overall business strategy and infrastructure. An innovation strategic alignment model is presented that supports alignment in a company by identifying the driver of change and its impact on other areas of the business. OPSOMMING"Instead of being really good at doing some particular thing, companies must be really good at learning how to do new things" [1]. Die vermoë om iets nuut te doen berus op beide die identifisering en bemeestering van die nuutheid, sowel as die belyning van die bestaande maatskappy met hierdie nuwe wending. Hierdie artikel belig die belyning van innovasie aktiwiteite binne die onderneming met die algemene besigheidstrategie asook infrastruktuur. 'n Innovasiestrategie belyningsmodel word voorgestel. Hierdie model ondersteun belyning deur identifisering van die drywer van verandering en die impak daarvan op ander besigheidsareas. INTRODUCTIONDifferent improvement initiatives within a company happen for different strategic, technical, and operational reasons, and are executed by different teams. Alignment of these initiatives has been shown to be a key competency required by companies to implement strategy successfully and achieve strategic goals and objectives [2,3]. As well as aligning operational business units with business strategy, aligning certain support functions, such as HR and IT, has been widely researched and documented [4,2,5,6].This paper focuses on the alignment of a company's innovation activities with the overall company strategy and structure. The paper starts by describing the relationship between change and alignment, and how the ability to align a company after a change is a vital competitive advantage. It describes different types of alignment models. One such model is the strategic alignment model (SAM). It was originally developed to provide a framework to align IT strategy and infrastructure with business strategy and infrastructure, to raise the IT function in a company from its traditional orientation of administrative support to a strategic role [4].In this paper, the SAM is adapted to develop a model combining innovation with strategic and structural alignment. This model is termed the 'innovation strategic alignment model' (iSAM). Its purpose is to define and connect the different components, tools, and methods required to align internal and external innovation domains and a company's overall business strategy and structure. This is achieved by integrating a range of innovation components, including innovation scope,