Innovation - #1 Driver of Business Performance

In a recent Accenture survey, 89% of executives agreed that innovation is as important as cost management for high performance. This indicates a big shift from 2009. The emphasis for most companies last year was on how to cut expenses. This year, there is the realization that you can't cut your way to business growth. And this survey bears that out.

Okay, from the Accenture survey we know execs think innovation is important. Below is the Daily Stat email I receive from Harvard Business Review (a very valuable resource that I strongly encourage you to check out). From this Ernst and Young survey, we can see that only half of the senior executives see their companies as more innovative than their competition – and 17% even say their less innovative than peers.

There are several reasons cited for this. For example, while many companies are investing more in innovation, only a few have a rigorous approach for managing the process. As a result even innovative companies often fail to realize the benefits that their new ideas could produce.

Interestingly, almost half of them blame the lack of appropriate personnel as a major contributor to their lack of innovation. You know as well as I do that you can't just go getting rid of everyone you don’t think is creative – and in fact you don’t have to. There are ways - which I will share with you in later blog posts - for discovering and tapping into the creativity in each of us.

And this is where you come in. Strategic, progressive leaders have an incredible role to play in boosting the innovation occurring within their companies – and it all begins with employee engagement. Next post - some proven ideas for how to engage your top talent.