The need for innovation in most businesses relies on the premise that you cannot save yourself into growth.

It is driven by any of the following business imperatives:

• The need for enhanced growth beyond current strategic plans
• The need to find alternative ways of mitigating cost pressures going forward in a rising cost environment

• The need to create strategic flexibility for the business going forward in order to create options and choices for management
• The need to improve market perceptions of a business. Empirical evidence proves that those companies who are constantly innovating trade at a premium to those that do not. The markets price in an expectation of innovation and growth
• The need to adapt a tired business model in the face of global competition

Management must ignore the temptation to try and appease shareholders and analysts in the short term, by following through on their convictions. They will in any event be held accountable at some future period.

The challenge for any competent management team is to determine whether their strategy will ensure that once they are done with all the cost cutting and increased efficiencies, they have something else in their quiver to off-set the unavoidable effects of inflation on their input costs in year two and three.

“The winners will get below the buzzwords and be recognisable by their focus on the outputs of innovation or real value delivered. They will create actionable platforms for experimentation and a road map to scale early success”  - Anon