The Dell Technologies Innovation Index reveals that only 14% of Singapore organisations can be defined as “Innovation Leaders and Adopters”.
These companies have an end-to-end innovation strategy and are well placed to navigate headwinds coming from a global recession, supply chain issues, environmental impacts and more, and continue to grow.
In Singapore, they are 1.3 times more likely to accelerate their innovation during a recession than Innovation Followers and Laggards (who are more likely to decelerate). This “innovation resilience” (which is the determination and ability to innovate during tough times) is credited as part of the reason why Innovation Leaders and Adopters are more likely to experience high levels of revenue growth (15%+ expected annual revenue growth in 2022) than Innovation Laggards and Followers.
Innovation Leaders and Adopters are also 1.08 times more likely to automate more to enable teams to innovate than Innovation Laggards and Followers.
Chart: Dell Technologies Innovation Index
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Factors impeding innovation
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the respondents say aspects of their company’s culture are holding them back from being as innovative as they want to be/can be. Also, 72% say their leaders are more inclined to favour their own ideas.
Additionally, businesses are struggling to embed a structured, data-driven innovation process to realise innovation across the organisation too. Case in point: 51% of organisations aren’t aligning all innovation projects to company goals, and only 26% of IT decision-makers say all their innovation efforts are based on data.
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The Innovation Index also explores where organisations are making gains and facing obstacles, across five technology catalysts for innovation: multi-cloud, edge, modern data infrastructure, anywhere work, and cybersecurity.
In nearly all areas, the greatest stumbling block to unlocking that potential is complexity. For instance, too many organisations have arrived at a multi-cloud environment by happenstance — an amalgamation of cloud platforms, apps, tools etc. The complexity is costing organisations time, money and precious opportunities to innovate.
