Four in five IT leaders consider data vital for business innovation

Market changes, process needs and the opportunities provided by new knowledge prompt innovation

The ability to innovate is important, but business leaders have mixed feelings about their organisations' ability to do so. While the prompt for innovation should be internal as companies look to gain a leg-up on their competitors, Computing research shows that it is more often external factors that act as the impetus.

Almost 60 per cent of survey respondents in our white paper said that industry and market changes were the more important sources of innovation; although happily, 55 per cent of business leaders say that process needs that they have identified are the next-largest driver. Significantly below the first two points came the opportunity provided by new knowledge.

The importance of industry and market developments as a spur for innovation underlines the importance of externally sourced data, as well as the importance of integrating often unstructured/semi-structured data into a format that can be used for innovation. Data integration is an area that many firms struggle with.

The responses to this question are particularly interesting because they hint at how businesses are prioritising their investment in areas such as data analytics. The answers are heavily dependent on the type of organisation: whether they gain a faster RoI by focusing on known knowns, or prefer to take a greater risk for potentially greater reward and focus on discovering unknown unknowns. The responses suggest that using data to derive insight about ‘known knowns' is the order of the day for the majority of businesses. The drive for knowledge on presently unknown opportunities is further down the line.

When we asked about the single biggest opportunity for innovation in respondents' organisations, responses were mixed. Some referred to the promise of new technology like automation and the IoT; while others discussed the general process of digital transition, and the greater availability and usability of data. Cultural prompts, like new senior staff or a high intake of young employees, were also mentioned.

Whilst the catalysts for innovation vary from one organisation to another, our respondents were more unified in their beliefs about the importance of data and data analytics in their organisations' ability to innovate. 81 per cent of respondents consider data to be very or extremely important, with 18 per cent claiming it to be moderately so.

Download the Optimising Data for Innovation white paper here.