60% of companies banked on ‘innovation’ during the pandemic, but will they see results?

Despite plans to increase their innovation budgets in the midst of the growing COVID-19 innovation push, a majority of businesses are set to see their investments squandered due to their own internal organizational shortcomings, according to new research by Wellspring.

While 60% of respondents reported that their corporate innovation budgets were expected to increase — with many of those polled saying they expected a significant rise in investment — several persistent organizational flaws and cracks are set to undermine this investment surge and result in huge financial waste. For example, per Wellspring’s findings, a mere 6% of C-suite leaders believe that a lack of C-suite engagement in innovation is a “very significant” impediment to Innovation Ops success, versus a third of VPs and senior innovators at every other level from Manager to VP.

Wellspring also revealed that severe flaws in communication and collaboration between innovation teams also threaten to derail innovation ops efforts; two-thirds of respondents said a lack of internal coordination between innovation groups was either a “very significant” or “somewhat significant” impediment to innovation success.

Wellspring surveyed 300 senior decision makers — including directors, managers, VPs, and C-Suite executives — at companies with annual revenues of at least $1 billion in the US and UK. The study, conducted over the course of 2021, examined key topics and trends that have dominated the corporate innovation sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For this study, Wellspring collected quantitative survey data — based on nearly 50 research questions — from 300 mid- to senior-level innovation leaders at US- and UK-based corporations across industry sectors with annual revenues of at least $1 billion.

Read the full report by Wellspring.