Innovation is critical to success in today’s highly
competitive, volatile world. The challenge is not coming up with good ideas,
it’s turning those ideas into income—that is, implementing or commercializing
innovations.
That’s the picture that emerges from a survey of
Chief Executive magazine readers by Accenture. The survey
found that even with today’s focus on cost cutting and efficiency, CEOs across
all industries and company sizes say that innovation is one of the top factors
in achieving competitive advantage. At the same time, however, only one in ten
executives strongly agrees that his or her organization excels at innovation.
In addition, most companies commercialize at the most 20 percent of their good
ideas.
What else did CEOs say? - CEOs take personal responsibility for driving innovation in
their companies.
- The companies that excel at implementing innovations tend to
address innovation on a variety of fronts.
- A lack of implementation resources is a key constraint to
innovation.
- Most companies use external resources at least some of the
time to help implement innovation.
- Companies view their customers as the most valuable external
source of assistance with innovation.
What is keeping businesses from doing better at
commercializing innovation? And what can be done to increase the rate and speed
of commercializing? Fortunately, the survey also pointed to some solutions
executives can use to bring their companies’ best ideas to life.
Read Innovation: Closing the Implementation Gap (PDF, 140K) to find out what CEOs say about
innovation today from an abundance of new ideas to the difficulties of
commercializing the most promising ones.
PDF Help “Innovation: Closing the Implementation Gap” was published
in the August/September 2002 issue of Chief Executive magazine
(Copyright 2002 Chief Executive magazine).
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