INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud

Index , a new study polling 6,600 employees across 45 + countries , reveals that businesses are confident in the strength of their organisation ’ s innovation in the face of global challenges .

A majority , UAE : 87 %, Saudi Arabia : 93 % say that they agree their business has a vibrant culture of innovation , but the research shows a clear innovation gap between perception and realisation .

The study findings point to the power of technology to enable innovation , and the consequences of falling behind .

The vast majority , UAE : 88 %, Saudi Arabia : 93 % are actively seeking out technologies to help them realise their innovation goal . Conversely , UAE : 57 %, Saudi Arabia : 56 % believe their technology is not innovative and fear they will fall behind their competitors .

These struggles are evident in the top cited global technology obstacles to innovation :

• Growing cloud costs

• Time and money spent to migrate apps to new cloud environments

• Difficulties integrating the overall business architecture with the IT infrastructure architecture

• Cybersecurity threats : cannot innovate with data and insecure edge devices

• Lack of IT infrastructure to meet and process data at the edge

“ Innovation and technology are the driving forces behind human progress , shaping the way we live and work . These , however , call for constant review to ensure novel ideas , processes and technologies truly drive change ,” says Mohammed Amin , Senior Vice President , CEEMETA , Dell Technologies .

To understand organisations ’ innovation maturity across the globe , respondents were placed on an innovation maturity benchmark ranging from Innovation Leaders to Innovation Laggards .

This reveals an innovation perception gap , as the results show , despite the positive view of innovative business cultures , only , UAE : 12 %, Saudi Arabia : 39 % of the organisations can be defined as Innovation Leaders and Adopters .

This is important , as globally , Innovation Leaders and Adopters are 2.2X more likely to accelerate their innovation during a recession than Innovation Followers and Laggards , who are more likely to decelerate . The good news is that the Innovation Index is a snapshot in time , and organisations can improve by priming their people , processes and technology for innovation .

Organisations need help to develop an innovation culture where all ideas can be effective and learning through failure is encouraged . Businesses recognise this and are confident in their ability to deliver . Over three quarters , UAE : 86 %, Saudi Arabia : 88 % believe that , in part , people join their company because they believe they will be empowered to innovate , which is a major achievement .

Mohammed Amin , Senior Vice President , CEEMETA , Dell Technologies

However , they need to ensure that they fix the innovation gap ., UAE : 58 %, Saudi Arabia : 54 % of respondents believe people also leave their company because they have not been able to innovate as much as they hoped they would . And UAE : 69 %, Saudi Arabia : 56 % say aspects of their company ’ s culture hold them back from being as innovative as they want to , can be .

In addition to people-specific changes , businesses should also look at how they can improve their processes around innovation . p

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