Contact: Jane Kneebone
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
National Communications Manager
0416 148 845

Contact: Louise Denver
Deloitte
FSI Communication Consultant
02 9322 7615

Contact: Julia Bickerstaff
Deloitte
Partner
0414 790 288

Contact: Narelle Kennedy
Australian Business Foundation
Chief Executive Officer
02 9458 7438

The message was loud and clear from middle market companies in the recent Deloitte and Australian Business Foundation investigation: innovate or evaporate.

More than 50 companies participating in the joint study, The Reality of Innovation Unzipped, defined innovation as ‘the clever use of new ideas and ways of doing things in order to add business value and deliver hard targets and specific outcomes’.

The study indicated that it was  not the supply of creative and innovative ideas that was at question – this is a given in a nation of early adopters and technology integrators. Participants believed the challenge was to ensure a repeatable and rapid means of converting ideas into business value.

To meet this challenge the participants agreed innovation needed to be seen as a core component of an organisation’s growth strategy. It also needed to be managed like any other process within the organisation with the necessary targets, funding, resources, accountability, and skills to convert innovative ideas into business, and speed up the return on investment.

The companies involved in this qualitative study agreed innovation is not something you do only if you are an enlightened firm, ‘it is something you do because you have to … to survive’.

All agreed they can no longer get by competing on cost or price, or even just on quality.

Narelle Kennedy, Chief Executive of the Australian Business Foundation said “Australian businesses understand that competing on the basis of knowledge and innovation rather than cost, is a decisive factor in achieving competitive advantage.” 

Key messages emerging from the Australian Business Foundation Deloitte investigation were:

• Innovation is more pervasive in Australia than we think
• Innovation is the active ingredient in transforming businesses
• Innovation is driven by markets and customers not just new products and technologies
• Innovation harnesses creative thinking in a disciplined way to solve a real problem.