A recent study of enterprise innovation, conducted by HFS Research, and sponsored by KPMG, suggests that there is significant room for improvement in how the vision for innovation at the top of the business is translated into action and outcomes at the tactical level.
Enterprises need strategies and structures that enable both transformative and incremental innovation to compete in the long-run. In today’s digital and connected world, changes to the business environment are happening faster than ever. Challengers—often new players outside of the incumbent’s immediate ecosystems—are able to deploy and scale new products and services at unprecedented speeds.
With revenue growth on the line, market leaders must execute existing capabilities ever more sharply. At the risk of obsolescence, they must simultaneously create new capabilities that counter disruption and shape their future relevance.
This research shows that a significant portion of CEO-level respondents1 have aspirations of creating transformational innovations—experiential ideas that expand enterprise-wide capabilities and business models (or create new ones) to reach new customers, markets and targets.
1The CEO-level respondent group includes CEOs, Presidents and COOs; it is described as CEO respondents throughout the report for simplicity. Non-CEO titles include Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Data Officers, Directors, Vice Presidents, and Line of Business Leaders.
At many companies, there is a misalignment between innovation management and actions and innovation vision and ambitions. Big strategic bets need bolder vision, and a much higher level of management engagement requiring a greater emphasis on vetting, validating, and prioritizing than incremental operational innovation.
While technology itself can be a significant driver of innovation, the pace of transformation is ultimately dictated by an organization’s business readiness and capacity to adopt new capabilities. When C-suite leaders provide a cohesive, centralized vision that aligns operations, culture and talent, and their investments, they can drive truly transformative innovation, make sustainable improvements to their business, and outmaneuver the competition.
Don Ryan is Chief Strategy Officer at HFS Research. He joined the firm in August 2020 as Senior Vice President of Research and Consulting. He leads large research-based advisory engagements and continue his long-standing coverage of technology, media & telecom vertical as well as enterprise application platforms and ecosystems.
Joel Martin’s research delves into how companies, service providers, and software vendors architect and deliver code via the cloud. Joel’s research covers the latest trends in developing code on microservices architectures while using containers and Kubernetes to adopt and integrate SaaS solutions into complex business workflows.
If you don't have an account, Register here |
With the exception of our Horizons reports, most of our research is available for free on our website. Sign up for a free account and start realizing the power of insights now.
Our premium subscription gives enterprise clients access to our complete library of proprietary research, direct access to our industry analysts, and other benefits.
Contact us at [email protected] for more information on premium access.
If you are looking for help getting in touch with someone from HFS, please click the chat button to the bottom right of your screen to start a conversation with a member of our team.
