Resilience sector insights - Innovation

Ultimately, it links to what we care about. It supports what organisations are doing now but also prepares for business needs in future. A huge part is around being able to explore new fields, being able to try new practices, as well as new approaches we can apply as part of a business. So, organisations can be protected for the future and are able to make decisions now which consider where they are headed.

Our innovation team is focused on a human centred approach, leveraging things like design thinking and user journeys. It is a great way of engaging people, but more importantly ensures our ideas are focused on people – thinking about the steps someone will take, in whatever innovative processes we apply. It is about how people are going to engage with us and our brand.

It is important we understand that clients, in a business-to-business space, are ultimately people at the end of the process - so it is about trying to understand the impact on the individuals who are going to be at the end of that.

We also need to consider the ideas of driving innovation in a business, but also perceive innovation as something which needs to be part of everyone's individual role. And ensuring an organisation has a structure that supports that - trying to drive a culture where everyone in an organisation can adopt that innovative approach. Innovation is important, it should not just be what we do to be innovative & creative, but also part of the embedded culture of business and the way we want to go forward as an organisation.

Following a process where you can easily identify ideas coming within the business and take them through a prioritisation process is crucial to enabling people to be part of innovation. A very simple process we follow focuses on ideas being brought in, reviewed and prioritised before we start any work on them. In practice, there will always be loads of ideas, but trying to identify and select ideas to take forward is dependent on the approach within an organisation.

Some businesses may use innovation days to target a specific problem or opportunity, or in our case we allow people to bring forward any ideas / opportunities at any point. The reason we take this approach is to encourage people from multiple parts of the organisation to bringing multiple ideas. For our clients, the biggest decision is how will you support those ideas.

We have an innovation process which drives the implementation ideas behind that. Other businesses may decide to have a dedicated team like we do, or once they have looked at the process to lead and implement an idea, they may decide to outsource the implementation to a company like Mazars who can support that transformation journey in the background.

The sheer speed of transformation that is expected inside an organisation means that people are not sure where to start. So, for example, if we think about AI, the problem people have is where to focus and start putting resources towards embracing the technology. This can be a really difficult task and sometimes means you must have external perspective - or a strong internal stakeholder who is able to make decisions and act quickly.

In terms of skills, the market speaks for itself right now. There’s a huge demand for skills in areas such as technology or accounting, but the scarcity of skills across the board is huge. Re-skilling people for the future seems complex.

Another challenge is around business models changing. Lots of organisations are introducing types of technology that haven't existed for a long time but trying to disrupt industries and practices that have existed for a long time; again, if you consider the use of AI in the manufacturing sector, as well as in other areas such as training and development.

In terms of opportunities, as there is so much innovation happening, every firm has an opportunity to re-think how they do business. A massive drive to re-defining where the organisation wants to be in the future.

Technologies that we haven’t seen will increasingly become expectation. Businesses who sold products traditionally are going to have to become more technology orientated. So, if we think about Vesta who started selling household appliances, then wind turbines, and now sell AI. There are loads of things which they have been able to do by embracing technology and knowledge.

Under strategic ideas, there are several things’ organisations need to consider - how are they going to adopt technology? The question should not be are we going to use AI, but how. The bottom line is if you do not adapt, you will become irrelevant and unable to compete.

In the process of adapting, you need to consider how you are changing the makeup of your work force to support that. If you are aware in the next 3 - 5 years of significant change, then mapping out who the key stakeholders are and how will they support that change will benefit you. Whether that is through change, transformation, or innovation teams; what is the approach to that and who is going to manage that?

More controversially, it may require you to consider, how you are changing the structure of your organisation to resemble that. You cannot always expect people who have traditionally been in certain roles to re-train in others.

We have also had an emergence of Chief Data Officers. If you believe in the future of AI, there has to be a Chief AI Officer – so you need to think, how does that look? What is the structure of your team that is going to support you and see success in that space?

There is a lot of technology, and the reality is there are breakthroughs in so many different areas - consider what is currently happening with Web3, Apple Vision Pro, and the work that is ongoing around cryptography and security. This comes back to the point around the need to create a framework and identify responsibilities to support that framework, irrelevant of what the actual technology is.

You need to structure your business around being aware of upcoming technology, but also to consider how you are going to integrate those ideas.

You can either chase and play catch up, or team up with an organisation that can provide specialist support and insights. Investment internally may work, but for a lot of organisations it would make more sense to team up with someone like our firm to develop those strategies. We can help you test out how ideas could work and apply frameworks, not just to support innovation, but also other structures of the organisation.

Other questions to include would be, how are you going to apply technology, and how are we governing all of this? A huge benefit of working with firms like us is our wide range of skills. The case studies we always use are organisations like Kodak – who did not face disruption as a company but were unable to adapt and then ceased to be relevant. Part of the reason that happened is because they were not spending enough time looking at the people involved, the voice of the customer.

Of course, Steve Jobs, famously said that when you look into the future, the customer is not always right. I do not think many people would have predicted generative AI. The value of working with organisations like ours, who can support you to plan for the future, is that you are more prepared and may already be exploring those ideas when change does occur.

There is only so much change an organisation can handle if you are not already prepared for it. You need a structured, thoughtful approach or you will ultimately struggle to remain competitive and relevant, and an external professional can help you to consolidate that.

If you would like to understand more about managing your innovation and digital projects, please contact us for an initial conversation.