North American and European Executives Say Business Strategy Depends Largely on Innovation

Business strategy is driven largely by innovation, but corporate responsibility for the innovation process is highly fragmented, according to findings of a survey published by Accenture.

The survey of 601 senior executives in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada found that innovation is a top corporate priority, but it also indicates that more senior-level accountability, greater CEO involvement and improved speed-to-market execution can help companies deliver on their promise of innovation and boost their competitiveness.

While nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents said that their organization’s business strategy is either totally or largely dependent on innovation, only 21 percent of respondents said their companies have a chief innovation executive, and even fewer — 11 percent — said there is a C-suite executive in charge of the process. Nearly half (48 percent) of respondents said that multiple executives are responsible for innovation in their companies.

The survey also found that companies that are successful with innovation are likely to have a chief innovation executive. Specifically, 40 percent of respondents who said their company's level of innovation is much stronger than that of their competitors also said that the person primarily in charge of innovation is a chief innovation executive.

The findings indicate that the challenge of innovation for organizations is not commitment and intent but rather execution against the innovation vision. While 59 percent of executives said that the level of support their CEO gives to innovation is greater than the level of support of CEOs at their closest industry competitors, a majority (57 percent) of respondents also said that their organization’s speed of innovation was slower than that of industry peers, and about the same number (55 percent) said that their frequency of innovation was less than that of their industry peers.

Respondents are concerned not only about their ability to generate new ideas, but also with their ability to consistently transform innovation into action. Only 15 percent of respondents said they are very satisfied with their company’s ability to convert ideas into service offerings, and only 13 percent said they can do it repeatedly. High on the list of innovation challenges cited by respondents are transforming ideas into marketable goods and services, cited by 29 percent of respondents, and creating a proper execution strategy, cited by 26 percent of respondents.

Respondents were asked how they would rate innovation in various regions, regardless of whether their organization has operations there or not. While respondents regard North America as the most innovative region – selected as “highly innovative” by 50 percent of respondents - they also consider Asia to be more innovative than Europe. Specifically, more than one-third (38 percent) of all respondents said that Asia is highly innovative, compared with just 22 percent who said that Western Europe is highly innovative. Interestingly, respondents in the United Kingdom and Germany share this view: Only 21 percent of UK respondents said that Western Europe was highly innovative, compared with 39 percent of UK respondents who said the same about the Asia Pacific region. Similarly, only 23 percent of German respondents said Western Europe was highly innovative, while 34 percent of them said Asia Pacific was highly innovative.

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