Innovation in enterprise

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Our new research explores the role innovation plays within large organizations, and where key decision makers see innovation going next.

It is no secret that business cannot survive without innovation. To gain competitive advantage, companies must continually develop, introducing new processes, new technologies, new tools. Wholesale digitalization has affected innovation in at least two ways. On the one hand, it has prepared the ground to ease the way for the adoption of new ideas. On the other, it has opened the door to new threats by complicating IT infrastructure.

Our colleagues investigated enterprise-level attitudes toward innovations: how they are implemented and what hinders the process. To do so, with the help of independent research company Savanta, they interviewed more than 300 employees of large companies in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Asia-Pacific region. The survey focused on the people responsible for innovation-related decisions, be they external, affecting clients and end products, or internal, affecting employees and work processes.

Judging by the answers, innovations often fall short in the implementation stage. The reasons are many (you’ll find them in the full version of the report), but most often failure is the result of insufficient planning. At the same time, 74% of respondents believe that innovations are bound to fail unless the CISO (chief information security officer) is involved.

As you might imagine, we’re most interested in issues pertaining to information security, so we were very interested to learn that the areas of innovation that decision makers consider the most promising also happen to be those they think most threaten corporate data security. In particular, 30% of respondents believe that the introduction of new IoT devices increases the risk of attacks and data leaks, 26% point to artificial intelligence, and 25% name blockchain technology as the threat amplifier.

However, our colleagues’ interests went beyond security. They also posed questions about the creation of new job roles connected directly to business development through innovation, as well as pinpointing what can go wrong and how to avoid new problems. You can download the full report here.
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