Looking Over the Precipice – PART 1

In my capacity as an Innovation expert, I was recently asked to present to the CIO Executive council on the role that Innovation plays in a global down turn market.

Key to the presentation was a recent survey from the European Financial Management and Marketing Association (EFMMA) that identified :-

9 out of 10 companies consider it VITAL to Innovate
and that
Only 37% of organisations have a clear strategy for Innovation

In other words, nearly 2/3rds of organisations have no clear strategy for innovation.

This sparked immense debate amongst the corporate audience. These statistics are surprising because we are all aware that Innovation is ever more critical in today’s economic downturn. If you are growing, you need to innovate to maintain market position. If you are shrinking, you need to innovate to stop the decline!

The killer blow from the EFMMA survey, was that “I.T. is seen as the biggest barrier to Innovation due to its inflexible systems & bottlenecks”

At this point, many in the audience of senior technology leaders were up in arms, as the results from the EFMMA paint a poor picture of the I.T. industry.

Whilst some of the sentiment of the results can be explained away due to governance tax and regulatory constraints that face the sector, 2 key points remain

(i) 2/3 of organisation’s don’t have a cohesive innovation agenda

(ii) IT is seen as restricting an organisations innovation.

In my next posting titled “Looking Over The Precipice – PART 2” I will explain how to get behind the statistics. I will also explore how you can embrace innovation to drive your organisation out of recession

If you would like to discuss this issue or provide me with your personal insight just contact me today.

IAN ALDERTON
Email : ian@IanAlderton.com
Tel : +44 (0) 7702 777770

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