Innovation Benchmarking: We Understand Innovation Goals Better Than Processes
Five questions embedded in the innovation process are most highly correlated to perceived innovation success, according to a survey of executives and company leaders across a dozen industries.
The findings suggest that a robust approach to an end-to-end innovation process can positively impact performance.
The survey also showed people are better at appreciating the value of innovation than actually pulling it off in practice — as well as showing we’re poor judges of our abilities to innovate.
Respondents were 13% more optimistic about how well they understood their company’s strategic innovation outcomes and processes than they were when asked to characterize the maturity of specific capabilities needed to put those aspirations into practice.
They also tended to score themselves highest on the capabilities that seemed to have a relatively low correlation to overall perceived success, including the ability to commercialize new products and develop go-to-market strategies.
There was even a negative correlation between the average category-by-category scores that company leaders gave themselves and each category’s relationship to innovation success described by the respondents.
The five questions whose answers had the highest correlations to perceived success were:
1. How does your company assess the feasibility of an innovative solution?
2. To what extent does your company include innovation as a tool for strategic growth?
3. How extensive is your company’s innovation strategy?
4. How does your company determine which product/service a consumer will want to buy?
5. How does your company satisfy market demands by deciding which innovative projects to pursue, and which to delay?
The survey asked respondents to assess their organizations’ end-to-end innovation capabilities, from setting a strategy that included innovative new products and services through actual development of new ideas, to taking the innovations to market and scaling up successes.
Within that process, survey respondents felt best at strategy, which occurred at the very front end, followed by taking products to market, which occurred much later the innovation life cycle.
They felt weakest in the middle – the process of going from good ideas to testing them in the market – and only marginally better at developing and executing growth strategies for successful new products and services later on.
There was an interesting disparity between respondents’ initial assessments of their companies’ capabilities and their more specific observations when presented with examples of maturity from a capability model.
Respondents felt they were best at assessing their innovation strategy's maturity, current overall strategic capabilities, and abilities to generate innovative ideas.
They felt they were worst at assessing whether they had the right talent for the job, their ability to finance organic growth around successful innovations, and their ability to balance resources.
Growth Innovation Strategy Methodology:
Respondents were approached on LinkedIn and through executive MBA programs at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.
Industries represented in the study included Biotech and Pharma, Consumer Goods, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Healthcare Provider, Insurance, News and Information, Media and Entertainment, Professional Services, Technology/Software, Utilities and Energy, and “Other.”
To take the survey, visit: http://bit.ly/innovationbench. I’ll update you as the information gets more granular.
Are you looking to refresh your strategy? Reach out for a consultation to strategy@growthinnovationstrategy.com.
