Businesses worldwide are confident in the strength of their organisation’s innovation in the face of current global challenges – 84% say that their company has a vibrant culture of innovation (68% in South Africa) – but Dell’s new Innovation Index shows that there is a clear “innovation gap” between perception and realisation.
To understand organisations’ innovation maturity across the globe, respondents were placed on an innovation maturity benchmark ranging from Innovation Leaders to Innovation Laggards. This reveals an innovation perception gap as the results show that despite the positive view of innovative business cultures, only 26% of South African organisations (18% worldwide) can be defined as Innovation Leaders and Adopters.
This is important, as Innovation Leaders and Adopters are 2,2X more likely to accelerate their innovation during a recession than Innovation Followers and Laggards. The good news is that the Innovation Index is a snapshot in time and organisations can improve by priming their people, processes, and technology for innovation.
People-primed innovation
Organisations need help to develop an innovation culture where all ideas can make a difference and learning through failure is encouraged. Businesses recognise this and are confident in their ability to deliver: 89% of South Africans (78% globally) believe that, in part, people join their company because they believe they’ll be empowered to innovate, which is a major achievement.
However, they need to ensure that they fix the innovation gap. Half of South African respondents (59% globally) believe people also leave their company because they haven’t been able to innovate as much as they hoped they would. And 53% (64% globally) say aspects of their company’s culture hold them back from being as innovative as they want to/can be.
The report also gives businesses a guide on how they can course-correct these issues, highlighting both opportunities to innovate more as well as the barriers that impact innovation.
Process-primed innovation
In addition to people-specific changes, businesses should also look at how they can improve their processes around innovation. The prime barrier to innovation for respondents’ teams is a lack of time to innovate which underscores the importance of senior leaders modelling prioritisation. Presently, 73% of South African respondents (68% globally) say their leaders are more focused on the day-to-day running of the business than on innovation. Without true, visible commitment at a leadership level, ambitious, skilled individuals can’t achieve their full potential on innovation.
Providing more structure around innovation can also lead to better outcomes. While by its nature, innovation may be seen as an organic, ad-hoc pursuit, 64% of South African Innovation Leaders and Adopters (63% globally) say their innovation is driven by special, dedicated projects.
Technology-primed innovation
The study findings point to the power of technology to enable innovation, and the consequences of falling behind. The vast majority (91%) of South African organisations (86% globally) are actively seeking out technologies to help them realise their innovation goals. Conversely, 53% (57% globally) believe their technology is not cutting-edge and fear they will fall behind their competitors.
The study also explores where organisations are making gains and facing obstacles across five technology catalysts for innovation: multicloud, edge, modern data infrastructure, anywhere-work, and cybersecurity. In nearly all areas, the greatest stumbling block to unlocking that potential is complexity.
These struggles are evident in the top-cited global technology obstacles to innovation:
- Growing cloud costs.
- Difficulties integrating the overall business architecture with the IT infrastructure architecture.
- Time and money spent to migrate apps to new cloud environments.
- Cybersecurity threats: can’t innovate with data and insecure edge devices.
- Lack of IT infrastructure to meet and process data at the edge.
There’s a powerful equation in business: innovative ideas plus technology equal impact,” says Doug Woolley, GM of Dell South Africa. “But there are several dependencies that are catching out organisations. They often think it’s to do with the idea. They’re waiting for the next big disruptive lightbulb moment. But small, practical ideas can create a ripple effect that leads to greater productivity, profitability, and purpose. What they can’t avoid are the right processes and technology. Value only comes when you have all three.”