This survey from KPMG, like most regular innovation surveys, is a good touchstone for (the seemingly slow) progress in the innovation profession. Across many surveys done by many different organizations across many years, the same issues keep popping up. Overall progress is seen in the changing percentages of responses and, from this perspective, corporations do seem to be getting better at this thing called innovation, albeit slowly and in fits and starts.
This survey doesn’t have any startling revelations, but it does document this progress. One interesting area that is covered quite well in this survey are the relationships between innovation and other corporate functions such as R&D, Strategy, M&A etc. There is even a few diagrams showing the structure of these relationships. The relationship between innovation and strategy is of particular interest. As the authors state:
We often see innovation teams struggling to articulate how their innovation efforts are aligned with strategy and transformational initiatives. And leaders are asking themselves if their innovation, organic, and inorganic growth programs collectively form a strategy.
There is also a lot of information about the organizational structure of innovation groups, their size and funding and their struggles to do transformational innovation within large companies.
This survey is typical of many in that there are interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout, but the potential impact of the survey is squandered by resorting to abstract platitudes rather than succinct insights and recommendations. This is a good and well done survey, and is worth reading, but the value of these types of surveys is declining over time.