Corporate Innovation Is On The Rise, But Still Has A Long Way To Go

Brian Solis has long been a proponent for digital transformation among large corporations, spending a large portion of his career trying to understand where companies are heading, what common roadblocks they run into, and speaking and consulting to companies to help them move in the right direction. In doing this he has outlined what he calls “ Six Stages of Digital Transformation .” The sixth stage in this journey has to do with corporate innovation; how companies innovate and adapt, something that is most interesting to us as intrapreneurs.

Recently, Solis published an article in The Next Web where he revealed some results from his 2017 survey on the state of digital transformation about “ how businesses were integrating innovation into digital transformation roadmaps. “ Since January is a time to get inspired for the year ahead, we wanted to share some of his more interesting results.

You Could Probably Be More Innovative

One of the most interesting results that Solis shared in his article was the discrepancy in how employees at different levels of a company viewed that company. Apparently, when executives at a company were asked if they believe their company had a “culture of innovation,” 75% responded in the affirmative. However, when lower-level employees were asked the same question, only 37% thought the same. That’s less than half.

These are interesting stats to unpack because they are both fully opinion based, yet both carry validity and extremely affect the company. Executives likely understand the full scope of resources that go into innovative initiatives at their company, they’ve seen how the company has moved forward from where they once were, and they, therefore, believe that they are actually doing quite a lot. However, if lower level employees think that their companies can do more to innovate, the general public and their customers may see it the same way, meaning there is room for improvement and more innovation.

The good news though, is that 52.7% of companies surveyed said that they are investing in developing more innovative cultures. They want to “ spark new learning, creativity, and work among the incumbent management and other employees.”

Innovation Is Getting More Formal

As intrapreneurs, you’ll be happy to know that companies are seeing and understanding the benefits of being innovative and starting to get more serious about it. Solis points out that every year he sees the number of companies that are putting formal innovation programs, either internal or external, into play grow, and in 2017, that number rose to 39.2% of companies surveyed.

As companies start to understand that innovation is going to help keep them relevant and help them to bring in more money, they’re also willing to invest more money into it. Of the companies that had their own innovation labs, 55.9% of them had resources dedicated just for their use. In-house innovation programs aren’t for all companies thoug h, but “19.7% of companies […] surveyed had established a corporate venture capital branch to invest in funds, startup companies, and/or acquire startups to help them further innovate.”

Seeing Value In Innovation

As innovation becomes more formal and more money is given to it, businesses need to make sure that they’re innovating in order to create real value. Luckily, this survey found that almost half of the companies they spoke with (42.6%) have found meaningful ways to to link innovation KPIs to business value. These companies are seeing value in the ideas that are being generated, the prototypes they can get into their pipelines, and, of course, new products created.

While these numbers show that there is a growing understanding of the need for innovation and steps being taken to create it, there’s still a long way to go. If established companies want to avoid disruption by new companies willing to do things in new ways, they need to commit more to supporting intrapreneurs and creating innovation. Solis says, “ Too many executives either downplay the need to innovate or falsely believe they are further along than they really are. This has to change. Decision-makers must recognize the need for change. “

To see more results from this survey, read Brian Solis’s full article here .

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