North America Scales Emerging Tech Fastest

Executives based in North America are blazing a trail in the adoption of emerging technologies – moving fastest from pilots to scale with an eye placed firmly on the promised benefits. But their ultimate success depends on taking their people with them.

• The relatively high reporting of emerging technology ‘pilots’ in European businesses vs those in NA and Asia-Pac indicates a relish for trying something new, but a tendency to delay moving out of pilot.
• Both NA and Asia-Pac are faster to take the leap – putting emerging tech to work in pockets around the business at similar scale (around 40% of companies at this step in both regions).
• It’s in scaling the use of emerging technologies across the enterprise that the spotlight falls on NA alone – with 37% of companies reporting this level of roll-out – where Europe scores just 26%.
• Our Data ViewPoint – Emerging Technology Adoption Has A People Problem revealed, three of the top four challenges facing companies, as they scale up their use of emerging tech, are about establishing the right attitudes and culture to embrace change.

HFS Bottomline. Learning from pilots and scaling fast with the results is vital. But it won’t work if people are left behind

No matter how effective your innovation processes, no matter how smart your selection of what to test and how to measure value, you risk blowing all the benefits if your people aren’t on the journey with you. Yes, this data does indicate European execs should seek to improve the rate at which they transition emerging technologies from pilots into generating value in the business. But it only measures scale of shift. As we start to record the success of the shift, HFS Research remains convinced the winners will be those who took this moment to reconsider and redesign how work is done and enabled a culture in which change can be embraced.