The three major dimensions that are driving the innovation maturity in SA are engagement, resources and digital. These three themes have gained momentum and emerged as receiving stronger focus by innovation leaders and value champions in SA.
This was according to William Mzimba, chief executive of Accenture SA and chairman, Sub-Saharan Africa, unpacking the findings of the latest Accenture Innovation Index at the Accenture Innovation Conference held in Johannesburg yesterday.
The Accenture Innovation Index annually measures and recognises systems of innovation in organisations of all sizes in the South African public and private sectors. Participants fill in an online innovation questionnaire that touches on all aspects of their organisations' innovation.
Mzimba explained more South African businesses are leveraging digital technologies to change their business models, and most of the companies that are classified as innovation leaders are those that have been successful in adopting open innovation.
"The Innovation Index shows only marginal growth in innovation among South African companies, with 57% of respondents found to be laggards, 29% acting as leaders in innovation and 8% of those who serve as innovation value champions seeing a return on innovation of over 40%.This year, the three major dimensions that are driving innovation in SA are engagement, resources and digital," he pointed out.
Digital
The digital economy, continued Mzimba, ushers an opportunity for larger South African corporates to use digital technologies to leapfrog competitors by enabling them to position themselves as a major player in the world economics and dynamics.
"Digital trends which are ushering in the fourth industrial revolution include customer interaction platforms, data collection tools, mobility channels, security, and cloud. Digital remains a key driver of innovation with 85% of innovation leaders using analytics. Every time we engage with customers; they leave data footprints which organisations can capitalise on to better understand their customer. Every enterprise needs to inherit digital, because if they don't, they will find it difficult to operate in an environment where everything has become digital," he noted.
According to the Innovation Index, 70% of organisations are now using analytics to deliver real time information and 74% of leaders are using digital to drive growth and efficiency versus 45% of laggards. Among the digital platforms used by organisations, social media was the most commonly used tool, followed by mobile devices, and cloud computing was the third.
"If an organisation fully adapts to digital and it becomes a cloud-first company, this will completely lower its operational cost, which will allow them to outsource their data capturing services. In order to compete in this digital economy, you have to do it at the lowest cost possible in order to satisfy customers."
Engagement
According to the Innovation Index, the workforce of a company who are invested in their daily work grew by 7% in 2016. About 70% of employees view innovation as a critical part of their job. The index also shows that 78% of companies encourage innovative thinking from employees.
"Culture is an important aspect of innovation, and under the engagement aspect, we make sure that engagement involves employees. In the past we have seen the research and development department of some organisations sit at the corner and work parallel to what the organisation is doing on a day-to-day basis. But today innovation is beginning to be integrated in the fabric of what the organisation is doing.
"Innovation value champions are embedding innovation in their organisation as a cornerstone of their innovation strategy. The study also reveals the talent development strategy of some organisations is now directed at acquiring new skills to be able to support innovation and through this approach, organisations are beginning to record a higher success rate," revealed Mzimba.
Resources
The Innovation index noted local organisations are leveraging resources such as financial, human capital, the relationships and the workforce they have, to generate ideas and facilitate innovation. This has significantly increased in 2016.
"The index shows that 71% of leaders allow for innovative ideas to come from outside their organisations and 95% of the innovation leaders are giving more control to their employees to innovate while offering them strong incentives and opportunities to innovate. If SA hopes to continue in the 21st Century, the pace at which the nation is innovating needs to accelerate going forward," concluded Mzimba.
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