Indian companies are likely to increase investment in innovation in the coming year. According to a survey conducted by Confederation of Indian Industries and the Boston Consulting Group, Indian firms give top priority to innovation compared to their global counterparts.
According to the report released Tuesday in Mumbai, nearly 83 percent of Indian executives surveyed said innovation was among their top three priorities for their companies compared with 66 percent globally.
Within the manufacturing sector, innovation is essential for survival and Indian companies are among the most active innovators among the rapidly developing economies with respect to the number of patents filed.
Arun Maira, chairman, BCG India said since Indian companies were still small compared with their global counterparts, innovation was imperative to grow.
That does not only mean creating new products and services but also finding new ways of addressing customer needs and creating value for customers and the company.
However, the key issue remains how to develop a culture of innovation within an organisation. Earlier, Bolko Von Oetinger, director (strategy group), BCG, said that to be innovative, it was important to unlearn and forget what one already knew.
Companies also needed to focus their efforts in the innovation dimensions relevant to their industry and introduce metrics to make informed decisions and to measure the effectiveness of the innovation.
70 per cent of the respondents said their companies would be increasing their spend on innovation in 2006 and 73 per cent were satisfied with the returns on the capital invested in innovation. As compared to this, less than 50 per cent of the respondents in the global survey felt the same.
The other challenges that face companies was the time and the market factor. Half of the respondents said the time taken for coming up with an innovation and it reaching the market was too long.
The survey was conducted over 83 senior management executives in the manufacturing sector.
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