Business leaders lack innovation insight

UK — Despite innovation being the backbone of business growth, a lack of quality advice is fuelling a fear of failure among business leaders and marketers according to a dunnhumby study.

While driving business growth remains the biggest concern among business leaders ( 73%) it is closely followed by innovation. Sixty-nine per cent of those surveyed said NPD is important in their roles, above budgets ( 58%), balancing affordability and profits ( 63%) and product marketing ( 54%). But despite this, almost a third ( 31%) of marketers find it difficult to access quality NPD advice and don’t know what proportion of their innovation budget results in successful launches.

Long lead times are also a barrier to successful innovation: 69% said it was the main hurdle, followed by budget constraints ( 52%) and fear of failure ( 48%).

The main measures of NPD success were deemed to be sales, profits and long-term viability although a lack of information made evaluation difficult. A third of companies surveyed spend up to £500k on product innovation, more than half £1m and more than 40% reinvested up to 20% of their profits into R&D.

The study carried out by Ebiquity involved qualitative and quantitative interview with heads of business development, marketers and NPD professionals in FMCG companies. Full report here.

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