"Accenture believes that High Performance Innovation is not about finding a single idea, but about achieving execution excellence in Innovation by being right and being fast through a comprehensive approach to Innovation performance."
The responses to a recent poll Accenture ran on LinkedIn revealed that people have very different ideas about the key ingredients for successful innovation. A full half of the respondents believe that understanding customer challenges is the key, while another third believe it is essential to embed innovation in an organisation. Industry foresight and speed to market came in equal third, while 4% opted for smart commercialization.
The truth is of course that all of these play a role in successful innovation. And even these don’t give you a full picture of what is needed for continuous successful innovation. But is there one element that is so crucial that without it successful innovation would be impossible?
Most people agree that perseverance and discipline are very important qualities for any entrepreneur or business leader. You need plenty of both to run and grow a business successfully. At the same time, most of us associate innovation with ideation and creativity, which is actually odd. Innovation essentially breaks down into two key activities: Invention and Scaling. It is absolutely no use scaling up a bad innovation, but not scaling up a big idea can also fail to deliver value. Invention is about foresight, ideas and creation. Scaling is about quality, speed and predictability; actually it’s about operational excellence in development & research. Successful innovators therefore treat innovation & product development as a systematic capability that can be repeated time and again. I do realize that this sounds a bit counter intuitive, but if you want sustained innovation success, you’d better start managing the development of your future business with the same rigor and discipline as you manage your current business.
Today enterprises can strongly benefit from the innovation that can be unlocked using Open Source solutions. Now that the consumerization trend in IT is moving so quickly, newest technology solutions are Open Source right from the start. Open Source is no longer a mere substitute for commodity solutions, it has become a key enabler of innovative solutions that just would not have existed without Open Source. Open Source now has started to out-innovate the IT mega-vendors.
These concepts summarize the Accenture keynote presented by Accenture’s Tony Roby on the 4th edition of the largest and most successful recurring Open Source Conference in the Benelux that was held on December 9th in Amsterdam. The annual conference, founded by Accenture and Red Hat attracted nearly 800 people and offered an extensive program of real-life cases and first class keynote speakers. Simone Brummelhuis, founder and CEO of thenextwomen.com chaired the event. Simone is no stranger when it comes to innovation, as she is also part a member the Accenture Innovation Awards jury.
Yesterday it once again became clear that innovation is still alive and well in the Netherlands. With 1250 participating concepts across various industries, over 25000 votes and 700 visitors and innovation enthusiasts, the fifth edition of the Accenture Innovation Awards was a big success. The coverage of the event via Twitter (#AIA11) even made it to the number 1 trending topic with over 550 tweets.
The Innovation Awards honors high performance in the field of innovation, uniting and stimulating innovators in the Netherlands. Accenture Netherlands Banking lead, and moderator of the event, Barend van Doorn welcomed the audience with an introduction of the story behind the ‘Blue Tulip’ and introduced the first of three key note speakers of the day; former CEO of Shell: Jeroen van der Veer. In the inspiring presentation he addressed the need for a society to innovate, stating that governments have to stimulate -not finance- innovation and restore the link of confidence between governments, corporations and citizens. With the keynote titled “Game Changers”, Accenture’s Global Innovation Lead Wouter Koetzier discussed this year’s participating concepts and their potential to have a breakthrough impact through 3 main trends in innovation to lead to Game Changers: Sustainability, Social and Digital. During the presentation he stated that innovation is the driving force for strong competitiveness, long-term profit and growth. Read more…
Open Source continues to be relevant for organizations. In the last year we have seen several clients continue to work with Open Source at a large scale, and we have seen an increase in proposal work related to Open Source. The Open Source Conference 2010 indicated a tipping point in the market, and was one of the largest Enterprise IT events in the Dutch market that was attended by almost 450 people.
Looking forward now, market analysts expect this trend to continue. Enterprises will increasingly deploy Open Source solutions in mission critical scenarios, at a service level that must be equal to or even better than closed source alternatives. Additionally, these solutions are being adopted increasingly by conservative IT organizations, driven by risk mitigations and cost considerations. Typically, organizations adopt the Open Source software stack bottom-up, that is they start on the system infrastructure level (eg. LINUX) and then move up the stack to application infrastructure (think applications servers) and to business applications.
In my opening post, I touched upon how companies that take a systematic approach to innovation manage to escape what we call “The Innovation Death Spiral”. They do so by balancing incremental-, platform-, and breakthrough innovation projects in line with their market positions, ambition and strategy. This week I will explore innovation types a bit more in-depth and zoom in on the importance of project portfolio balance.
Innovation success is either luck or it is based on a competitive advantage in foresight & insight. Companies that out-innovate competition time and again, systematically develop the market foresight and customer insight that informs them which are the most attractive future growth options and where they have the best chance of winning. Innovation most of the time does not start with an idea (something that happens to you) but with a sound understanding of a business opportunity driven by a customer need. The rigorous and systematic approach to defining business opportunities and developing ideas and solutions to meet customer needs, drives Bigger & Better innovation simultaneously. Consistent innovation success builds innovation confidence within the organization (f/e to overcome the fear to fail) and reinforces client interest in news from the company, almost as a self fulfilling prophecy. Innovative companies are also seen as more attractive to work for by top talent. So this is all why companies as diverse as Google, P&G and of course Apple generate superior value from innovation.
The latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2010, published in late August, seems at first glance to paint a very positive picture of entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. According to the Monitor, the Netherlands now has the highest number of start-up businesses in Europe. In 2010, no less than 7.2% of the adult population was involved in establishing a start-up business or managing a business that had been up and running for less than 3.5 years.
So on the face of it, entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in the Netherlands. In fact, it’s healthier than it has been for decades. However, the Monitor also notes the shortcomings – or weaknesses – of the Dutch entrepreneurial world. Foremost among these is the modest level of product and business innovation. Partly as a result of this lack of innovation, the Netherlands has at best an average score in terms of the number of fast-growing businesses.
Last month on August 30th the winner of the A2 challenge 2011 ‘Crowdriding‘ was announced during the Grand Finale in one of the most historic buildings in Amsterdam ‘De Waag‘. What started as an initiative of Philips, Mediaguild and High Tech Campus Eindhoven has become one of the largest local business plan competition for talent in the Netherlands.
By bringing together technical and business talent fragmented across the Dutch A2 high way road (which connects the 2 most prominent Tech melting pot High Tech Campus Eindhoven with the center for creativity, finance and business opportunities in Amsterdam), we aim to stimulate the level of innovation and entrepreneurship in this region. The participants were challenged to come up with new business ideas and innovations across four thematic streams: Consumer Lifestyle, Clean Tech and Energy, Healthcare and Media & Communication.
There is no lack of great innovative ideas. In fact, most companies have far more ideas than they can ever possibly use. Accenture believes that what sets truly successful companies – the high performers – apart is that they take a systematic approach to innovation. This is what enables them to pick the best ideas, the ones that will work and generate profitable growth, win market share, or even create new high-growth markets.
But how do they do it, again and again? Especially given that the odds are against them, with a mere one in every 1,000 innovative ideas actually proving successful. The key to successful innovation is coming up with the right innovations for the right markets. The best ideas rarely appear out of thin air. The only way to come up with the best innovative ideas – consistently and repeatedly – is to make innovation an essential part of how you do business, of your strategy.
For decades insurers cherished their reputation for conservatism because individual and corporate customers demanded solidity and constancy from the recipients of their premiums and investments. But things have changed. Today, the more conservative insurers are under threat, and innovation has emerged as the key to future success.
The first part of Accenture’s global Consumer-Driven Innovation Insurance Survey 2011 conducted in 13 countries of over 7,000 insurance consumers reveals that 90 percent of consumers are either “very” or “somewhat satisfied” with their insurers. They are fairly satisfied with and have high expectations of their insurance providers, which sounds very promising, but compared with an earlier survey the “satisfied” level has declined by 21 percent since 2009. An other interesting finding is that 33 percent of the respondents in the 2011 survey say they are unlikely to recommend their life insurance providers to others.
Leslie: I will have to agree with Wouter…Too many companies do take their customer’s loyalty for granted…Hopefully this will change...Read the full comment
Wouter: Nice story, Angela! Unfortunately there are still too many companies that take the loyalty of their customers for granted. I hope Roy’s story...Read the full comment
The responses to a recent poll Accenture ran on LinkedIn revealed that people have very different ideas about the key ingredients for successful innovation. A full half of the respondents believe that understanding customer challenges is the key, while another third believe it is essential to embed innovation in an organisation. Industry foresight and speed to market came in equal third, while 4% opted for smart commercialization.
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Today enterprises can strongly benefit from the innovation that can be unlocked using Open Source solutions. Now that the consumerization trend in IT is moving so quickly, newest technology solutions are Open Source right from the start. Open Source is no longer a mere substitute for commodity solutions, it has become a key enabler of innovative solutions that just would not have existed without Open Source. Open Source now has started to out-innovate the IT mega-vendors.
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There is no lack of great innovative ideas. In fact, most companies have far more ideas than they can ever possibly use. Accenture believes that what sets truly successful companies – the high performers – apart is that they take a systematic approach to innovation. This is what enables them to pick the best ideas, the ones that will work and generate profitable growth, win market share, or even create new high-growth markets.
For decades insurers cherished their reputation for conservatism because individual and corporate customers demanded solidity and constancy from the recipients of their premiums and investments. But things have changed. Today, the more conservative insurers are under threat, and innovation has emerged as the key to future success.
