UK business leaders share mixed feelings about ability to innovate

Innovation is critical to survival, but is often relegated to R&D or data science teams instead of being a whole-business process

A business must innovate if it wants to survive. Standing still is no good in today's instant, cashless, fast-moving economy: producing new ideas faster than the competition is critical. More than at any other time in history, innovation is a ‘must-have' more than a ‘nice-to-have', and good data practices are at its heart.

This applies equally whether an organisation is in the private or public sector, as seen in the Open Government Data project, which aims to make government data available to everyone. The UK government in particular has been focused on the concept of open standards, working to break down silos and and help departments to learn from each other by sharing knowledge.

But despite the importance of innovation, UK IT leaders have a very mixed opinion about their companies' ability to innovate. In a survey reported in a new Computing white paper, 43 per cent of respondents considered their organisation to be ‘good' at innovation, and 19 per cent ‘very good'. However, the remaining third are struggling. 27 per cent listed their organisation as merely ‘acceptable' at innovation, and 11 per cent said it was ‘poor' - or worse.

The 38 per cent of respondents who expressed little confidence in their organisation's ability may be because innovation is rarely a dedicated function - in less than one fifth of all cases we saw. Most firms relegate the responsibility to R&D or data science teams, but in almost 30 per cent there was no systematic management of the process at all.

This mixed picture is an interesting find, and at odds with the results that our respondents had seen from innovation. The most frequently realised benefits span process, organisation and the products and services themselves.

43 per cent had improved production and/or delivery operations; 36 per cent had seen more organisational/managerial benefits; and 35 per cent had improved their sales and marketing operations. 35 per cent had also been able to develop new products using data as the product itself (data products) or as a major component of the product (data intensive products).

Only 3 per cent said that they had seen no benefit from innovation, and 1 per cent said ‘Don't know'. Clearly, there is a strong impetus to innovate, but individuals must share that passion with the business to achieve provable benefits.