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we're meeting today with kim wagner
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who is a partner and managing director
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at the boston consulting group or vcg
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and kim is an expert in corporate
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innovation
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and she has been author of a
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of a recent study called managing the
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unmanageable radical innovation
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but her latest work just out is
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something called the most innovative
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companies of 2014. this is a study that
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you've done for
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a couple of years in a row now and
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it's a survey i believe maybe you can
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talk about briefly the methodology and
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then what some of the highlights of
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of the study are sure so this is our
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ninth time doing the survey
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we we do it roughly on an annual basis
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and what we do is we go out to
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about 1 500 individuals who are involved
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in corporate innovation they range from
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ceos down to engineers on the shop floor
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and we asked them about which companies
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they find are the most innovative
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why they think that they're innovative
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we combine
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that result with
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estimates of revenue and margin and
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success in general in the financial
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markets and that generates our list
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of the top 50 companies
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each year it varies a little bit from
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year to year
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one year last year actually we had a lot
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of automotive
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players on the list the year before we
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had a lot of industrial goods players on
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the list
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this year i would call it the return of
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the tech and the consumer companies to
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the list
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and so you know digital innovation and
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um innovation in the consumer
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electronics space has boosted those
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quite substantially on the list so it's
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not just the companies that came out
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with
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cool innovative products or very useful
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products it's companies that actually
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did well selling them revenues and
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profits
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flowing to the bottom line so it's a
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combination of those two right but
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realize we're polling
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essentially executives and so to some
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extent this is a peer
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it's a pure study so if executives
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believe other executives are innovative
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then they end up on the list what do you
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think they think about when they
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want to choose the most innovative
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companies
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what are what are their criteria how do
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they tend to think about it i'm sure it
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varies by industry a lot and that sort
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of thing but if you can generalize a
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little bit
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i'm sure it does and what's interesting
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is we actually ask them how innovative
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they think they are
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and and this year we added some extra
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questions around culture
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and around because innovative culture
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became a big theme
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this year as we talk to our clients as
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well as
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what it takes to do radical innovation
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and do they believe that they are
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breakthrough innovators or just
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incremental innovators and just using
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the results of what they believe
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and the way that they behave i would say
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that they're looking at
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the strength of the senior management
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focus on innovation the resolve to stand
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up and say i'm going to continue to
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invest in this even when other people
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say no
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the strength of their processes both
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around portfolio and new product
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development
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the strength of their ip management and
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the focus on the customer
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it's it's very much customer and
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consumer driven
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and common themes around the winners
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whether they're automotive or high tech
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or other
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well the the common themes is that when
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you when you look at the list
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um wow the common is probably the the
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uncommon
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meaning that it's a very diversified
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list
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there's the auto players are still on
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there the electronics players are still
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on there there's been some shuffling
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up and down a couple financial services
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companies i i'd say it's it's very
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diverse
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and that's exciting apart from the uh
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the the industries that you mentioned
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how else has the list changed
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over the last couple of years not just
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last year but you know maybe the last
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three or four
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years well you know it's interesting
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over time the
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healthcare players have dropped off the
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list um
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that maybe that's not so surprising
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given that
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you know the healthcare industry almost
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by definition are breakthrough radical
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innovators
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and when they often go out in the public
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and say we have an innovation problem
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everybody believes them
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what most people don't realize is just
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how innovative they are
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relative to every other industry and so
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it's almost like the
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smartest kid on the block saying i'm not
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very good at this but realize that they
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have an
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extraordinarily high bar there's very
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little incremental innovation in the
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pharmaceutical industry
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go ahead anything else that that would
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be interesting to know about your report
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this year
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yeah we we've dug into the cultural
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aspects
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um of innovation and what we
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found is some very stark lines between
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um companies that you would say
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are average innovators to those that are
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strong innovators and those that are
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breakthrough innovators
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and they vary along multiple dimensions
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you know in your breakthrough and strong
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innovator group
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being part of a new product development
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team is something that people aspire to
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it's it's a cool kid role it's a
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profession
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it's not something somebody does as one
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of the things on their list of things to
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do
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what we often find in some companies
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that aren't very good at innovation is
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that new product development is a piece
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of everybody's job
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as opposed to being some people's
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full-time job
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and so we found that that was quite
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important we've also
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found that centralizing the decision
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making and control over how
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innovation resources are managed is also
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quite important and the stronger and
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more breakthrough
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the more likely it is that those
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decisions are centralized as opposed to
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decentralized
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so there's been some interesting things
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on on the culture front that
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we'll be talking about thanks very much
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thank you
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you
