The survey found that 71% of organisations have budgets and resources dedicated to innovation, rising to 86% among large businesses (those with over 250 employees) and a large majority of those questioned actually have a team or department that’s dedicated to innovation, with three quarters (75%) meeting more than once a month to discuss potential areas to creatively improve.
So why do companies feel that they are struggling when it comes to being innovative?
Innovation is seen as a priority for many organisations, but most believe that they are struggling to become more innovative. Half of those questioned for this survey consider their rivals to be more innovative than they are.
Most of those questioned said that there are too many steps involved in getting management to give the go ahead for new ideas and too many organisations are risk-averse, when it comes to embracing new innovative technologies. Even among those that have looked to implement a new technology in the past 12 months, a third said that they had tried and failed – with many pointing to Brexit as hampering innovation in their organisation.
According to Ritam Gandhi, Founder and Director of Studio Graphene, “Innovation is one of the most used buzzwords in business – that’s because almost every organisation is, essentially, seeking new ways to improve what they do and how they do it. Unfortunately for large businesses, our research shows they are facing more pronounced challenges in their pursuit of innovation.”
So, what to do?
Well it might be all well and good having budgets and personnel dedicated to innovation but, according to this research, if the processes for creating and implementing new ideas are not in place then employees’ creative thinking is likely to get lost in a web of red tape and end up simply being rejected by risk-averse managers!
