4 Big corporate innovation trends you need to know about in 2018

Innovation doesn’t always come easily to big corporations. That’s understandable. After all, these are businesses that have spent almost all their energy getting to the top of their specific industries. Dedicating resources to focus on something more experimental can seem like a gamble at best and outright dangerous at worst.

Thing is, taking such risks can be the difference between an organisation surviving and being consigned to history.

You only have to look at the fact that just 60 companies that were on the Fortune 500 in 1955 are still there today to see how vital innovation is.

The companies that have survived are the ones that have been able to keep up and progressively adapt their business models to the prevailing business conditions.

Knowing what those conditions are is, therefore, important. With that in mind, here are the corporate innovation trends you need to know about in 2018.

Artificial Intelligence

Let’s be clear about one thing: artificial intelligence is still very much in its infancy. Corporates therefore shouldn’t think of it as something that can readily replace high-skill employees.
At this stage, AI is more suited to time-consuming drudge work. Use it for that and you can give your employees time to focus on new, innovative ways to do their jobs.

It is important, however, that you actually allow them to this work and don’t simply load up their schedules.

Smart Workspaces

The most innovative companies have always engineered their spaces to allow for easy interactions between employees from different departments. They know that this allows for the easy spread of ideas and new solutions to difficult problems.

Thanks to internet-connected sensors, companies are able to apply data to that kind of engineering and design.

And, as research house Gartner notes, smart workspaces, “will also enable the linking of physical and digital worlds, encouraging device providers to expand or create partnerships around immersive and collaboration solutions”.

Increased M&A Activity

Rather than building up their internal innovation capacity, some companies acquire smaller operations doing innovative things in the same, or similar, spaces.

It’s a phenomenon that’s been on the increase over the past few years. And, according to Deloitte, it’ll speed up even further in 2018.

In fact, the professional services firm says, “technology acquisition is the new number one driver of M&A pursuits, ahead of expanding customer bases in existing markets, or adding to products or services”.

“Talent acquisition,” it adds, “continues to trend upward as a motivation for M&A strategies”.

It is, of course, important to remember that companies have to be responsible when it comes to such acquisitions. Control them too tightly and they’ll end up feeling constrained and frustrated. Fail to show enough interest and they’ll start to wonder whether it was worth being bought out in the first place.

Internal Accelerators

Rather than acquiring startups, an increasing number of companies are using the accelerator model to foster internal innovation.

In this model, employees are allowed to pursue ideas as if they were startups. Freed from the usual corporate constraints, they can quickly develop a concept from prototype through to a properly built solution.

As Forbes notes, this freedom will allow them to push the boundaries of current markets. Done properly, building an internal accelerator can see companies thrive with constant injections of creative energy.