In this opinion piece, Simon Bright, Chief Operating Officer, Capgemini New Zealand and Australia, explains why innovation is more crucial than ever to help organisations survive the next big business model shift - and allow them to hit their sustainability targets.
Innovation has a powerful influence on all aspects of business. It is something in which everyone has a stake and has never been more exciting, with a multitude of technologies blossoming to transform our social and business landscape.
Many of these have moved from the realm of science fiction to the forefront of modern thinking, with very real implications for business.
Innovation used to be somebody's job. Usually, it was someone in the R&D department who would be given a workspace near the back of the office and expected to come up with a few new ideas a year. Over time, innovation has become a function, but it wasn't until the advent of start-ups driven by disruptive technology that companies started to accord innovation the status it deserves.
The first step to becoming an innovative organisation is establishing the right culture. Easier said than done; our latest Conversations for Tomorrow research* found that 82 per cent of organisations cited culture and mindset change as significant obstacles in achieving agility.
The research draws on the insights business and social leaders have on innovation. One of these, Gary Pisano, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, emphasises the basics: "People in innovative organisations need to develop a thick skin. An innovative culture is expected to be fun. I think it can be fun - but it's not purely fun. People want to embrace just a part of it, not the whole thing."
Marty Curran, Executive Vice President and Innovation Officer at Corning highlights an important part of an organisation's innovation culture when he says: "It's critical to bring bad news to leaders faster than good news."
It's not just about failure and success; organisations need to find their true north star - to know where they are trying to get to. As Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat says in adding an important caveat: "Getting an innovative culture started is only half the task; maintaining it is the tricky part."
Innovation is vital in helping organisations capitalise on a wave of new emerging and transformative technologies such as synthetic biology and quantum tech.
Ten years ago, two scientists - Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Douda - published the test results of an innovative experiment on bacterial genes. Today, the CRISPR gene-editing tool that arose from that is regarded as one of the biggest biological breakthroughs in recent scientific memory, the pair receiving the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020.
Doudna, Professor at the University of California, Berkley, explains the importance of CRISPR: "It is important to remember that what we're talking about here is effectively changing evolution."
Co-authors of the Genesis Machine (2022), Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel, believe everyone should be paying attention to synthetic biology: "We can now programme biological systems like computers."
The possibilities arising from DNA editing are limitless - from eliminating diseases to mitigating the impact of climate change through next-generation seeds. From a business standpoint, Capgemini's Ezzat believes we are barely scratching the surface of synthetic biology: "We are looking at a trillion dollar market, ripe for disruption," he says.
The development of such potential requires strong oversight. Religious leaders like Father Paolo Bemnanti, Professor at Pontifical Gregorian University and a technology adviser to the Pope, are actively tracking this space.
"We must develop a 'guardrail' to keep technological development on track," he says. "There are experiments using synthetic biology to augment humans, (and) as well as the possibility that this could give rise to sinister inequalities, there is also the problem of poorer countries again becoming experimenting grounds for rich countries."
Quantum tech offers a phenomenon known as the 'quantum advantage' through technologies like the best available supercomputers, tap-proof communications and ultra-precise and fast measurements.
Such technologies can bring a huge shift in the way in which businesses solve problems around optimisation, mechanical simulation and machine learning - and bring greater efficiencies than current technologies in risk management, cybersecurity, logistics, scheduling operations, discovery of lightweight materials or new drugs and addressing climate change among other areas.
As consumer preferences shift, organisations are prioritising sustainability focused innovation. But more work needs to be done; according to our research fewer than one in three manufacturing organisations have internal alignment on sustainability priorities.
Claudia Nemat, a member of the Board of Management, Technology and Innovation at Deutsche Telekom, believes technology to be our only route to a sustainable planet. "Without digital technologies, we would never be able to become a carbon-neutral society," she says.
Silvio Micali, recipient of the Turing Award in Computer Science and a founder of Algorand, also emphasises the need for sustainable digital technologies. "We have a moral obligation to the planet and that includes creating a blockchain that brings advantages without wasting energy. Global, borderless, open-source technologies must consider their impact on the environment."
Sustainable innovation must be scalable. Our research indicates that only 13 per cent or organisations across sectors have successfully deployed AI (artificial intelligence) use cases for multiple business teams.
While many large organisations have set up innovation hubs and are partnering with start-ups, few have looked ahead to the next step.
The impact and value of innovation are only fully realised through scaling and adoption. Harvard's Gary Pisano drives the message further: "Failure to scale is a symptom of the failure of the innovation system. Organisations don't think clearly enough about the scaling issues, the manufacturing or the service issues.
*This article follows the findings and key observations from Capgemini Research Institute's latest quarterly journal, Conversations for Tomorrow #5, which looks at how innovation leaders transform industries, from religious, scientific, business and political perspectives.
A copy of the research can be found here:
www.capgemini.com/nz-en/insights/research-library/conversations-for-tomorrow-5
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