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Year after year, this analysis has proven that those firms identified as being the most effective innovators consistently outperform their peers and the market.”

Now is that surprising?

It should not be but sadly for the vast majority of companies that do not treat innovation as seriously as they should, as the growth enabler, it keeps them in a constantly lagging position. It tells a very powerful message, one of investing in innovation seriously and in sustaining levels, you can grow well above others.

Points from this research

I’ve known Tim Jones for some time. Tim is certainly a recognized leader in innovation, growth and foresight – he has always been helping organizations grow and be ready for the future and does some terrific work.

He is a founder and programme director for different initiatives “housed” under 1) the innovation leaders org,- this is the research programme that identifies the world’s most effective innovators  2) the growth agenda org, – that sets about helping companies build new growth platforms and 3) the future agenda – the world’s largest open foresight initiative explores the key issues facing society over the next decade.

Recently Tim has been  announcing the results of the 2016/17 Innovation Leaders research that identifies the companies which achieve the most from their innovation activities and deliver tangible, sustained growth. Now in its 16th year, this annual analysis profiles the global leaders across 25 different sectors, (click this one to see who) highlighting the shifts taking place and identifying new achievements.

The 2016/7 analysis reveals three notable trends extracted from Tim’s supporting remarks from this recent report:

US Dominance in leading innovators

“After greater European and Asian presence over the past decade, this year 20 of the 25 leaders are US based organizations. This is the highest single country concentration since the research began in 2001 and reflects both the continued global dominance of the West Coast as a centre of innovation and its impact on other sectors across the country, some of which previously had a greater focus on M&A driven growth.

The remaining leading innovators are based in Denmark, Korea, Germany, Spain and the UK. The drop in European presence on the list, down 50% within a couple of years, should be raising some hard questions about the future of innovation across Europe”

My thoughts here: For me this does raise real concerns on innovation across Europe. It consistently is lagging and seemingly not catching up as it does not have all the levers to become more dynamic in growth as we are seeing in the tepid economic growth conditions seen in most European countries.

Partnerships at the Fore – the trend critical to finding new growth

“Although effective collaboration has been a key component of successful innovation for some sectors for some time, it is clear that, today, this is increasingly influential across the board. Organisation’s such as Accenture and Cisco and KT Corporation have positioned themselves specifically to help to drive customer innovation; companies like Adidas, Delta and LEGO are using partnerships to maximise brand impact; and firms including Boston Scientific, Dow Chemical and Lilly are all focused on collaboration across their respective ecosystems. Irrespective of sector, deeper partnership-driven innovation is very much at the fore. This does not suggest that the days of ‘going it alone’ are over, but highlights how, in an ever more interconnected world, delivering high impact change requires new alliances”.

My thoughts here: This is why I believe the power of platforms and working in ecosystems is certainly one of the key ways forward to “innovate for growth”

Big Bets

“While some companies such as FedEx, Inditex, PepsiCo and Reckitt Benckiser, continue to focus on delivering consistent incremental innovation, more radical breakthrough approaches are core to several organisations’ growth strategies. It is clear from both new product launches and underlying patent activity. Alongside Alphabet’s significant ‘Other Bets’ activities, Amazon’s strong moves into AI and Apple’s major R&D investments, others are also raising the stakes. Whether this is Bank of America’s proactive positioning on block-chain, Humana’s investments in digital, LEGO’s movie partnerships or Nvidia’s expansion from gaming into automotive, more established companies seem willing to explore and support a number of major intelligent future growth investments: Tesla’s bold moves continue to capture many headlines but others are not holding back”.

My thoughts here: The radical / transformation bets are beginning to take hold. More companies worried over their poor growth track records are looking to find “growth pathways” but struggle to find the ways to do this as they have failed to make the necessary, sustaining innovation capacity building investments.

About the Innovation Leaders Analysis

In order to gain an insightful and validated perspective on the true innovation leaders on a sector-by-sector basis, the annual Innovation Leaders analysis assesses the performance of 1,500 of the world’s top companies against a number of specific key parameters.

The individual innovation and growth performance of the top companies within each sector are compared against each other and additional research around the differences between the leading organisations is undertaken to ensure that the perspectives gained are fully up to date. This provides what we believe to be the most accurate picture of the companies that are the most effective innovators in each sector, and allows us to highlight the respective key competitive strengths.

The eight areas that we research and input into the assessments across different sectors are:

1      Organisational culture and supporting structure;

2      Strategic focus on innovation driving corporate growth;

3      New product launches and relative success ratios;

4      Growth in revenues, profits and market capitalisation;

5      Average revenue and margin per product or customer;

6      Investment in activities such as R&D and marketing;

7      Brand value and human capital growth; and

8      Peer review from within the sector.

For more information on this research please contact research@innovationleaders.org or to view the recent presentations.

So here is a link to the results of the 2016/17 Innovation Leaders research that identifies the companies and a link to their new website

I’d recommend exploring this as I picked this up on from Tim’s LinkedIn post, as it was only published today, 5th March 2017, and where I have drawn most of this ‘informing’ post.

Essential read for those wanting to build the business case for innovation and see who is leading in innovation and growth returns from their focus on this.

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The post Setting yourself apart through Innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Of course I am not suggesting this is all our business leaders but I would argue innovation and its ‘make up’ remains a mystery to nearly all our leaders.

They are more than willing to allocate responsibility down the organization, failing to recognize their pivotal role in managing or orchestrating innovation engagement themselves, or even ensuring the mechanisms are fully in place. Why is this?

Time and time again you read one report after another, about the leadership gap in innovation or issues relating to innovation disconnecting from the top of the organization.

You can read reports from Booz, Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting, the Conference Board, Harvard Business Review, IBM, A T Kearney, A D Little and many others all reporting issues and gaps in connecting innovation at the top of our organizations.

Can they all be wrong, if not then why aren’t our CEO’s listening? Why are we not resolving this and only just keep reporting it?

In March of this year Capgemini Consulting and IESE issued their report called the “Innovation leadership study” and this went deeper than most into the problems.
The study revealed that “the absence of a well-articulated innovation strategy is by far the most important constraint for companies to reach their innovation targets.”

In the report they mentioned not just the lack of many formal mechanisms were missing but the total environment for innovation was missing this explicit innovation strategy. That is a serious failure at the top of organizations in my opinion. How can leaders expect innovation if they remain unclear of their role and function in facilitating and encouraging it?

Can this change?

A collaborative effort
Jeffrey Phillips of Ovo Innovation and myself have collaborated on a number of different innovation frameworks over the last twenty-four months or so.

These have been  to offer concepts or frameworks that we felt were missing or needed explaining. We have set about the offering up of possible solutions to reduce much of this ‘mystery’  that seems to still surround innovation.

As we shared and exchanged views, we have mutually recognized our personal frustrations on this continued leadership gap towards innovation.

This has been triggered even more by this Capgemini report and so we decided on a way forward as our ‘tipping point’ to set about studying this and seeing if we could find a solution to this innovation leadership issue.

Or at the very least, advance this recognition, beyond debates from this constant recognition of a problem, into offering an emerging framing on the ways to begin to resolve this.

A soft launch will happen offering our integrated innovation ‘framing’ as a solution.

We think we have now arrived at a further tipping point and will ‘soft’ launch the integrated innovation framework this coming weekend, starting Sunday 9^th September 2012.

We will build within a series of seven articles, one per day over a week, which we believe make up the component parts.

We will attempt to explain what we see as an integrated executive innovation framework that will be delivered through a work mat methodology approach. These articles will be published initially through www.innovationexcellence.com to gain an audience of innovators and then will be taken out further by our two respective organizations in further field work, validation and consultation.

I recently wrote a series of articles in August and one is perhaps worth reading again, this is “From a buzzword to the imperative.” In this I discuss this need for a framework and then go on and explore different components within a series of subsequent articles, that I felt needed leadership attention.

The present argument needs moving on and resolving

There is no argument surely that we need to break into this leadership gap around innovation? We need to offer suggestions towards their role, to address this lack of engagement or awareness?

We need to provide an organizing framework that achieves alignment into the organizations goals and provides the structure across innovation that can ‘cascade’ down and across an organization.

The end aim is that so all those involved within the organization, or closely associated with it, can relate too and ‘gather’ around an overarching framework, articulated and constructed from the top, that guides innovation.

We want to narrow this leadership gap and organization understanding so as to achieve a specific connection between leaders and their role in how they can facilitate and bridge this clear divide and present seen ‘impediment’ for innovation.

The leaders of organizations are no different from all the employees working within the company, they are all looking to secure a sustaining future and participate in a vibrant one that primarily comes from the innovation engine needed for all businesses and economic growth.

The contribution of the leaders within organizations falls mainly on defining their role, laying out its parts in a coherent way for all to relate too.

We believe this framework approach can be one of the primary organizing ways for that engagement and identification so much needed.

Tune in please and we certainly hope you can relate to what we are offering

We believe this integrated framework will require some real leadership engagement but we believe the outcome can offer four significant benefits:

1. The framework can create cohesion and consistency of innovation purpose that will reduce many existing barriers and uncertainties around innovation
2. As the leadership does become engaged this will demonstrate a significant commitment and promise that will certainly increases the visibility of innovation, lowers risks, encourages more involvement and generation of better ideas.
3. The framework itself will generate work flows that connect, become more dynamic to explore and promote the innovation skills, capabilities and competencies needed. They become more cohesive, coordinated and focused
4. As the framework connects, in its understanding and as its impact grows, we certainly believe confidence builds. Both formal and informal areas are addressed in parallel, growing all-round identification and alignment.

A challenging road to travel

To get to this tantalizing promise needs a lot of recognition, engagement, investment and commitment. You don’t suddenly arrive at enacting such a change without some ‘hard yards’ to cover and tough issues to resolve.

We are only at the starting point by offering this integrated innovation framework. We have confidence it will help, what we need is the right audience to listen and simply say “I get it.”

For the leaders, to hopefully see its organizing value and fit and their critical role to play in supporting innovation through this organizing and integrated framework so the organization initiates and delivers what is expected, better than today.

Do we see bumps on the way, of course, do we feel they can be navigated, again of course; otherwise you don’t start the journey. We are equipping ourselves for some demanding challenges.

We continue to invest in this framework as we see it does offer real potential

We feel this period of research, investment and consistently exchanging between us both has certainly increased in intensity over the last six months.

We have built a structure; a methodology and a guiding set of approaches that help facilitate and provide the CEO and his leadership team with a way to radically reduce that innovation leadership gap.

We can offer a clear ‘way forward’ for engagement and alignment that can help, perhaps radically, the organization to establish innovation firmly into the minds of the boardroom and their vital role to play within this real need for all to engage in.

We seek to bridge the innovation leadership gap
All I can do at this stage is ask you to please explore this series of articles, don’t rush to judge and dismiss, take the more explore and reflect, approach. We simply want you to have a similar identification and equally ‘I get it, maybe we need it’ at this stage.

We hopefully begin to bridge the innovation leadership gap and the role they need to play and we feel we offer a way to address the lack of innovation leadership that is clearly ‘out there missing’ in nearly all organizations.

In organizations this needs internal discussions to recognize this ‘gap’ and then gain the leaderships attention to how this can be addressed. The proposed integrated innovation framework might be the place to start and our arguments might be the catalyst.

We launch our “emerging thoughts” in this series of articles on the different innovation domains needed to be explored at the leadership level, this coming weekend 9^th September 2012, and each day, during that week.

We outline these through the frameworks different domains themselves. Do take a look and I hope you agree, we offer a way forward and are wanting to engage and deploy this framework to the leadership of innovation.

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