Deloitte Survey: How Millennials See Innovation

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) have provided a set of interesting results from a survey of the world’s future leaders and what they think about innovation, which was released for the World Economic Forum, held in January 2013. Millennials see innovation differently

The top line was only 26% of those surveyed believed their current organizations leaders encourage the practices that foster innovation. This indicates a major shift really is needed in the organizational mindset to give innovation the chance to thrive.

The implications are nicely summarized by this statement from Deliotte’s Global CEO. “Innovation at the institutional level is needed to sufficiently shift an organization’s mindset to allow new ideas to truly emerge and thrive,” said Deloitte Global CEO Barry Salzberg. “While our current business leaders can debate how and where to innovate, it’s clear how much importance our future leaders place on innovation—not just as a driver of business growth but also as a catalyst for solving society’s most pressing problems.”

DTTL surveyed close to 5,000 Millennials from 18 countries. When gauging the perception among future leaders about innovation and its impact on society, 84 percent say business innovations have a positive impact on society, and 65 percent feel their own company’s activities benefit society in some way.

For more information and to view the survey results, visit: www.deloitte.com/millennialsurvey

The critical message – can we wait or shift leaders aside who don’t get it?

“A generational shift is taking place in business as baby boomers, many of whom may have been wedded to the ‘old way’ of doing business, begin to step down from their leadership roles to retire,” said Salzberg. “Real opportunity exists for organizations to step up and create the conditions and commitment needed to encourage and foster innovation in their work environments. And there’s a tremendous upside if we get this right: we can better retain talent, remain more competitive into the future, and more positively impact society.”

The report provides a nice infographic here: https://tinyurl.com/autexyn

So what really catches my eye?

The one chart that stands out for me is the one that outlines the required provisions of innovation conditions and the present delivery “gap” in creating these to foster innovation.

Taking this as the make-up of many of the essential conditions it is worth listing them here

1. Encourage & reward idea generation and creativity
2. Provide employees with “free” time that can be dedicated to learning
3. That leadership encourages idea sharing regardless of seniority
4. To promote openness and the freedom to challenge
5. Provide a commitment to successfully advance innovation ideas
6. Provide strong and inspirational (innovation) leadership
7. Have a clear vision of the future
8. Have a (better) understanding of the Millennial generation
9. Improve or expand use of internal social and informal learning (methods)
10. Encourage both formal and informal learning
11. Have a (real) commitment to a sustainable business
12. Provide (the conditions) and commitment to continued development
13. Provide (consistent) improvement to internal processes
14. Commitment to (consistent) and continual product and service improvements
15. The (vexing issue) of a lack of hierarchy

The ones highlighted in bold gained the highest responding as needed but this is a fairly valuable list to work from in fostering the ‘right’ innovation conditions.

The Millennials felt the purpose of business was to improve society, generate profit and to drive innovation. They overwhelmingly believe innovation is essential for business growth. They feel it is acceptable for business to profit from social innovation and those organisations that are (clearly) seen to be innovative will attract the talent

According to DTTL the findings endorse the importance of leadership and innovation and the impact business can have on society. This creates opportunities for business leaders – both individually and collectively – and for the long-term success of their businesses.

My initial thoughts triggered from this survey

Today’s leaders need to think very differently about their role and the expectations of business, if we are to capitalize on the opportunities that innovation can provide, simply by allowing these opportunities to be shaped more by the Millennial generation, sitting inside or collaborating outside their organizations.

For me, this survey simply strengthens my view that today’s leaders just don’t get innovation in the multiple ways they should: to enhance their business and to regain growth.

The generations coming up into leadership positions are not just aware of innovation’s importance but are being exposed and trained in all the different facets but are often seemingly frustrated that those above “simply don’t get it and the bigger picture”.

The issue is “can we really wait?” I don’t believe so. Some might need to step aside or be pushed aside- do you know any one?

image credit: facebook.com/DeloitteSAgroup

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Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities.