Dive Brief:
- The majority of technical innovation projects, 63%, take place outside traditional stakeholders and budgets, according to the TIBCO 2018 CXO survey of more than 600 respondents in C-suite SVP, VP, senior director or director IT roles.
- The majority of respondents, almost 60%, focus innovation on people and culture. Executive management is the primary sponsor of innovation, followed by IT and finance.
- Projects face hurdles from limited time and resources, limited or no budget and security concerns. "Culture can help solve the top two obstacles," according to the report, and appropriate technologies address the third concern.
Dive Insight:
Innovation is influenced by people and culture but it's led by technology. All three are necessary and must be synchronized for best results.
"Many companies are distracted by new technologies and innovation labs that are tech centric," Shawn Rogers, senior director of analytic strategy at TIBCO, in an email to CIO Dive. The result is leaving behind the people and culture.
The trickle down approach for innovation is a concept that's making its way through industries. Retailer Neiman Marcus recently dissolved its tech innovation lab in favor of a more pervasive approach.
Successful innovation labs should be more like shared service so all organizations can use it. The ones that exist in silos are usually shuttered from insufficient support or buy-in from the rest of the company.
The secret to adopting disruptive technologies is a company's digital transformation progress.
While factors like talent gaps and small budgets hinder initiatives, companies that are mature in digital transformation are twice as likely to adopt technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain, said Rogers. "Digital transformation maturity dictates the technologies you're ready to use to innovate."
Adopting technologies like advanced analytics raises concerns around scalability in analytics operations, life cycle management of models, automation of simple and complex analysis, and collaboration, according to Rogers.
"It's clear that innovative companies are growing their reliance on AI/ML and are striving to execute at a newer, more sophisticated level," he said.
