Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Team Membership™ (GTM) recently completed its 2013 survey of R&D/innovation and product development executives. The executives were asked to identify their most pressing challenges for 2013. GTM will focus its best practices research to address the prominent issues identified in the survey.

This year’s survey indicates that R&D executive’s challenges are focused on portfolio management: from creating an accurate technology roadmap to identifying new opportunities for mature products. Overcoming these challenges requires R&D executives reassess their processes that identify and embed customer needs within innovation and develop key performance indicators to guide project prioritization and monitoring.

Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Team Membership™ (GTM) recently completed its 2013 survey of corporate development executives. The executives were asked to identify their most pressing challenges for 2013. GTM will focus its best practices research to address the prominent issues identified in the survey.

Frost & Sullivan’s 2013 priorities survey revealed that corporate development executives continued to grapple with fundamental issues associated with M&A and business portfolio management. Specifically, corporate development executives need to reassess their current acquisitions processes and ensure that the company’s strategic goals are used in target assessments and integration plans. Regarding business portfolio management, executives need to conduct regular assessments of the business portfolio using a repeatable process, based on standardized criteria.

Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Team Membership™ (GTM) recently completed its 2013 survey of corporate strategy executives. The executives were asked to identify their most pressing challenges for 2013. GTM will focus its best practices research to address the prominent issues identified in the survey.

The 2013 priorities survey revealed that corporate strategy executives continued to wrestle with a perennial issue: embedding and implementing the vision. Specifically, corporate strategy executives have to reassess their companies’ mechanisms for communicating, managing, and monitoring strategies’ implementation. This includes dedicating resources, defining and reporting on metrics for strategic goals, and integrating robust change management capabilities into the process.

Would it surprise any of you to know that looking for the next big idea was the top priority for R&D executives in 2012—regardless of region, industry, or business model?

Identifying the next breakthrough idea rarely involves a “Eureka” moment, and history tends to sweep the long hours and list of failed attempts under the rug. Companies understand the advantages associated with developing emerging technologies but are reluctant to commit substantial resources to high-risk projects.

 So what are their options?

Applying an Open Innovation (OI) Model is a key for any company looking to identify breakthrough product/service ideas. Open innovation is based on the tenet that good ideas can come from anywhere—your clients, independent developers, or adjacent businesses. But establishing a model that effectively brings external and internal ideas and capabilities together is extremely challenging. Some of the challenges include:

1. How do you get buy-in and overcome the fear of lost IP?
2. What makes the role of OI differ from traditional R&D?
3. Is there a process to test the technical feasibility and market potential of new ideas?

Companies around the world have openly embraced OI, but are they paying it the attention it needs to be successful?

The infographic below explores this question by examining how companies in the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe (1) dedicate staff to OI and (2) use OI in the product development cycle.

In 2012, marketers' attention was focused on developing a compelling value proposition in response to the changes in customer needs and purchasing behaviors. This need required marketers to re-evaluate their segmentation schema, re-prioritize markets and segments, and reassess their demand generation activities. As we enter 2013, the question becomes: Did these activities help marketers pinpoint the “right” customers and ensure relevant and compelling messaging?

Take the 2013 Marketing Survey

This survey includes questions on top internal challenges, resource trends, and a special interest topic: mobile marketing.

In 2012, both corporate strategy and corporate development executives continued to struggle with perennial issues. Strategists were focused on establishing long-range strategies, developing effective implementation plans, and aligning corporate and financial objectives. On the other hand, corporate development executives were concentrating on issues surrounding M&A activity—ensuring acquisition strategy supports the corporate strategy and target identification. Are corporate strategists and development executives focused on similar topics in 2013 or have their priorities shifted?

 Take the 2013 Corporate Strategy and Corporate Development Survey

This survey includes questions on top internal challenges, resource trends, and special interest topics: change management and business portfolio management.

Your input is important to us and drives our research agenda for the year. All responses are confidential, and participants will receive a copy of the complete survey.

If you have any questions regarding the surveys, please contact me at: holly.lykehogland@frost.com.

Holly is the Research Lead for the Growth Team Membership, a best practices research group within Frost & Sullivan. Follow her on twitter at @hlykehogland.

A while back I was having a long conversation with my son on how to interact with girls. I was so happy; here was the opportunity to pass on my wisdom to the next generation. After going through a list of suggestions, my ego was completely crushed by five little words “But it’s a new century Mom. Girls are different now.” This has become a running joke for my son and I. Anytime we experience the dreaded generation gap he pulls out “But it’s a new century, Mom.”

The stark reality—especially for us old timers— is that it is indeed a new century and younger generations, particularly Millennials, are causing profound changes in how we do business. I recently became fascinated with this topic when I had to incorporate the effects of Millennials in two research projects on knowledge management and employee engagement. Once the topic was on my radar, I couldn’t turn around without seeing articles, blogs, or heated debates about Millennials in the business world. The bottom line is Millennials will be the majority of the workforce in the next fifteen years, so business needs to be prepared for the inevitable changes this brings.

So how are Millennials affecting business?

• No such thing as off the grid—Millennials have never experienced a world without technology that allows them to instantly access and share information. Millennials also demand a balance between their personal and professional life. I’m not implying Millennials work less; in fact, they are willing to put in long hours to see any project through. They just want more flexibility on when they put those hours in. Because of the era of instant communications coupled with flexible working hours business can and are expected to be conducted anytime, anywhere.
• Collaboration is the name of the game—Millennials’ education stressed group projects, where a complex project was divided up into individual tasks. Consequently, many Millennials are very comfortable working as a group and see themselves as “equal” team members in any endeavor.
• Work to live is not an option—Millennials grew up with the tenet “follow your dreams” and have a bad reputation as job hoppers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Millennials want to ensure what they do has meaning and involves their passions.

So what do all of these things mean for business?

Companies have to rethink how they engage employees. A few engagement solutions I’ve seen in my research include:

1. Crowdsourcing—tap into your employees for their thoughts and feedback on business problems, policies, or new product and service ideas.
2. Employee surveys—pinpoint your employees’ motivators and help match employees with special projects or career development plans that reflect their interests and passions.
3. Social programs—give your employees the opportunity to make a difference or engage in activities they find important—this could include a corporate responsibility program or internal social networks like Yammer.
4. Public and immediate recognition—don’t wait until reviews, let employees and their teams know they did a good job as soon as the project is done.

How have Millennials impacted your business and how are you addressing it?

Holly is the Research Lead for the Growth Team Membership, a best practices research group within Frost & Sullivan. Follow her on twitter at @hlykehogland.

Maintaining steady growth and staying ahead of the competition is a constant concern for all businesses. Shifts in technology, product commoditization, and customer preferences sometimes require companies to pull back and reassess their competitive strengths and business models. However, that is easier said than done. How do you determine there a need for change in the first place? What capabilities will lead you to your goals? How can you get companywide buy-in? And finally what roles do communication strategies and corporate culture play in this type of endeavor? I will address the first three questions in future blogs, today I’d like to tackle some of the concepts around the role of culture in change.

Culture is a nebulous term; in many cases it’s easier to identify what doesn’t fall under the umbrella of corporate culture than what does. However, culture can loosely be defined as the particular behaviors, beliefs, and norms of a specific group.

So why is this important for change?

Culture influences how people respond to change.One of the principals of change management is understanding how people respond to change and integrating those responses into your plan. In almost every organization, you can identify three change archetypes:

1. Champions—individuals that support change but feel frustrated with their inability to create change on their own. Due to their enthusiasm, champions are the perfect employees to get onboard early, assign activities within the transformation plan, and use their success stories to motivate others.
2. Fence sitters—individuals that tend to take a “wait and see” stance; they rarely speak up but observe the conversations between champions and naysayers. Fence sitters tend to make up the bulk of employees and are the target audience for most communication strategies and change management tactics. The key is to build up momentum through communications and success stories, converting fence sitters to secure change.
3. Naysayers—individuals who tend to see no solution and often react vocally and negatively. Naysayers see themselves, however, as realists and have their own role in change. They help balance the abundant enthusiasm of the champions, and many of the objections they bring up are valid and should be addressed. Management can use the conversations created by addressing naysayers’ objections to convert fence sitters.

Your corporate culture tends to determine whom you hire—ultimately determining the ratio of each of these archetypes within your organization and consequently the amount of planning that needs to go into converting fence sitters and naysayers.  If your culture emphasizes flexibility, innovation, and collaboration, it’s likely you will have more champions than naysayers.

Communication styles are embedded in corporate culture. A second principal of change management is the use of communications to engage employees and earn their trust, so they understand and embrace change. Communications are how companies establish acceptable norms and behaviors within the organization. Furthermore, how communications are conducted reflects the values of the organization. As I mentioned in a previous blog on communications, one of the chief culprits behind most business challenges, including business strategy adoption, is inadequate communications.  So what does this mean? That communications are a critical component of your corporate culture and will determine the success of your endeavors. Companies whose culture stresses transparency, cross-functional communications, and employee engagement are one step ahead when it comes to change management. These companies already have established the trust and two-way communications needed to create buy-in, establish expectations, and continue the momentum for change.

These two components are by no means the only ways corporate culture and change management intersect. For further information on how culture and change management can be harnessed for effective business transformations, stay tuned for future blogs and an upcoming guidebook on how HCL technologies was able to implement a major business transformation during the economic recession and re-establish its competitive standing in the market.

 Holly is the Research Lead for the Growth Team Membership, a best practices research group within Frost & Sullivan. Follow her on twitter at @hlykehogland.

Marketers continue to be faced with the imperative tofind ways to appeal to specific customer needs, keep costs down, and drive higher ROI. This focus on the customer has marketers reassessing their value propositions and customer segments—to target the “right” audience with an engaging message. However, marketers are expected to take on this task with limited resources—budgets and staffing levels are expected to remain stagnant. To accomplish more with less, marketers are striving to improve the effectiveness of lead generation efforts and adoption rate collateral by Sales. More pointedly, marketers are striving to improve their channel strategies and collaborate closely with Sales on segmentation efforts.

To examine these challenges in more depth, the survey asked respondents to “root cause” their top internal challenges; indicating if they stem from issues with staffing, process, technology/systems, or strategic alignment. Respondents attribute their challenges to two primary causes: limitations in staff and a lack of common objectives.

When comparing Marketing’s 2012 resource allocations to forecasts made in 2011, the belief that budgets and staffing would remain static is inaccurate. In fact budgets have decreased since 2011. In regards to staffing, budgets have dropped by over a third. In contrast, marketers’ growing love affair with social media is readily apparent as social media activities are receiving twice the budget allocation they did last year. Additionally, marketers have allocated more budget to “content development”, which is critical for demand and lead generation activities.

This year’s survey included examined Marketing’s demand generation capabilities. Overall marketers are satisfied with their demand generation effectiveness—most respondents ranked their effectiveness as “Above Average”. Marketers are also satisfied with their effectiveness at specific demand generation tactics—with the exception of social media and mobile marketing.

Holly is the Research Lead for the Growth Team Membership, a best practices research group within Frost & Sullivan. Follow her on twitter at @hlykehogland.

This year’s survey results indicate sales executives’ 2012 challenges are shaped by their need to increase productivity. Specifically, sales executives need to pinpoint the highest-value sales activities, streamline their sales processes to match, and invest in new tools and practices for team collaboration. The other prominent challenges are enhancing the ability to monitor the business environment for shifts in pricing pressures and customers’ purchasing behaviors and needs.

To further explore this year’s challenges, respondents were asked to “root cause” their top challenges—whether they derive from issues with staffing, process, technology/systems, or strategic alignment. Sales executives attribute their challenges to the gamut of process, tools, and people. While respondents foresee little to no increase in staff, budgets are on the rise.

Given social media’s increasing role in companies’ strategies and activities, the survey asked respondents about the sales force’s use of social media. An overwhelming majority (98%) of the respondents are using social media in their daily sales activities. Specifically, respondents employ social media to identify needs, build awareness, and nurture ongoing client relationships. Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn is the primary social media platform sales executives use—primarily joining special interest groups to enhance their understanding of customer needs. Fewer respondents are actively participating in or creating special interest groups, which forgoes opportunities to demonstrate topical expertise.  

Regarding the use of virtual and social media tools in sales activities, respondents employ tele-presence and/or live streaming video and predictive analytics—the analysis of customer behavioral data to identify patterns and insights for customer interactions. However, few respondents are using social media monitoring tools (e.g., Radian 6), dashboards (e.g., Hootsuite or MediaFunnel), or CRM systems (e.g., Nimble). Consequently, sales executives are not realizing the full benefits these tools offer for improving customer focus, collaboration, and productivity.  

Holly is the Research Lead for the Growth Team Membership, a best practices research group within Frost & Sullivan. Follow her on twitter at @hlykehogland.

The survey reveals that R&D executives in Asia Pacific are focused on challenges surrounding two topics: (1) managing the product portfolio and (2) integrating inputs from an array of sources outside of R&D. In regards to the first topic, R&D executives are struggling to generate an accurate technology map—that outlines customer needs, the current technology landscape, and gaps. Developing an accurate technology map is the first step to addressing R&D’s other portfolio management challenges—prioritizing and funding projects within the portfolio. A technology roadmap allows R&D executives to develop a portfolio strategy—that pinpoints which needs match company capabilities for development. Furthermore a formal portfolio strategy is necessary for an effective portfolio management process and measuring project ROI.

Customer-facing functions such as Sales and Marketing are a rich source of innovation information on everything from customer needs to feedback on current products. However, R&D executives struggle with establishing a method to consistently capture and integrate this information with their product development process. Some solutions to this dilemma include establishing regular cross-functional exchanges of ideas, or interacting with customers directly—via crowdsourcing or a formal open innovation process.

To examine these challenges in more depth, the survey asked respondents to “root cause” their top challenges by indicating if they stem from issues with staffing, process, technology/systems, or strategic alignment. R&D executives attribute their challenges to two causes: limitations in staffing and processes. Fortuitously R&D executes foresee additional resources to address their challenges—both staffing and budgets are expected to increase.

 In view of open innovation’s (OI) growing prominence and potential to systematically capture ideas from a broad network, the survey asked respondents about their use of OI. The majority of respondents include OI in their product development processes. Open innovation is largely employed for idea generation and concept testing and customers are the primary source of ideas. Most of the respondents have a dedicated OI team within R&D.

 Even though companies are committed to using OI—a concept that is founded on tapping into multiple sources for ideas—respondents still cite struggles with gathering and integrating insights from Sales and Marketing and customers. This may be attributed to respondents’ challenges with the fundamentals of establishing an OI program: overcoming the fear of lost IP, establishing a framework for collaboration, and garnering the resources needed to test incoming ideas and technologies.

One of my roles in my household is mediator between my son and husband. Like many a father and son, they are so much alike that sparks fly on a fairly regular basis. Not surprisingly, nine times out ten, their frustrations stem from a lack of communication. Needless to say, pointing this out results in an emphatic eye roll from my son and gruff sigh from my husband. However, once they do talk, there is peace in the house for at least 24 hours.  

So what does this have to do with business?

Part of my job is to conduct annual priorities surveys, to pinpoint role-related challenges for executives in Marketing, R&D, Corporate Strategy and Development, Market Research, Competitive Intelligence, and Sales. Some challenges that come up year after year include:

• How do we get buy-in at all levels of the company for strategy adoption?
• What’s the best way to get support for that promising innovation?
• How can we get the strategy team to integrate our insights into the annual planning process?
• Why won’t Sales use the collateral we developed?

Any of these sound familiar?

In addition to picking their top challenges, the surveys also ask respondents to pinpoint the root cause of each challenge. In addition to limited resources, there are three recurring culprits—ineffective processes, a lack of common objectives, and inadequate communications.

Another key part of my job involves creating best-in-class case studies (Best Practice Guidebooks) that address the challenges identified in the surveys. In almost every case study our team produces, the best practices require developing communication mechanisms—to generate buy-in, break down silos, tap into out of the box ideas, and create transparency and trust between stakeholders. Here are two common methods we have found for creating sustainable communications:

1. Formal cross-functional committees—these committees tend to meet monthly and include representatives from all the relevant stakeholder groups/functions. These committees are useful to discuss resources, create transparency on project milestones, and supply information on project status prior to hand-off.
2. Informal monthly meetings—these meetings tend to include staff from related functions (such as Marketing and R&D) and are particularly useful for sharing best practices, breaking down silos, and brainstorming long-range or disruptive ideas.

Much like with my son and husband, when left to their own devices, business communications tend to break down or be shifted aside for more pressing priorities. Communications are vital to ensuring the health of any project or process and require commitment and nurturing equal to the multitude of benefits it offers.  

Holly is the Research Lead for the Growth Team Membership, a best practices research group within Frost & Sullivan. Follow her on twitter at @hlykehogland.

Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Team Membership™ (GTM) recently completed its 2012 survey of R&D/innovation and product development executives throughout Europe. The executives were asked to identify their most pressing challenges for 2012.

The survey reveals that R&D executives continue to struggle with doing effective portfolio planning and leveraging a wide network for idea generation. Moreover, respondents are challenged by how to generate an accurate technology map—outlining customer needs, available solutions, and technology gaps—to guide portfolio planning and project prioritization. The other prominent challenge is a perennial one, identifying the next breakthrough idea.

To examine these challenges in more depth, the survey asked respondents to “root cause” their top challenges by indicating if they stem from issues with staffing, process, technology/systems, or strategic alignment. R&D executives attribute their challenges to two primary causes: limitations in staffing and processes. R&D executives are unlikely to see additional staff in 2012; most respondents expect staffing level to remain static. On a positive note, budgets are expected to increase in 2012. Despite the emphasis on breakthrough innovation, most of the budget increases will be allocated to short-, medium-term, and incremental innovation projects.

In view of open innovation’s (OI) growing prominence and potential to help R&D develop emerging or disruptive technologies, the survey asked respondents about their use of OI. Surprisingly, given its prominence in the last two years’ survey results, the majority of respondents do not leverage OI in their product development processes. This may be attributed to respondents’ challenges with establishing partnerships and measuring the ROI of OI efforts. In regards to creating OI partnerships, respondents struggle with identifying partners with the right IP, establishing clear communication channels, and building sustainable trust. The R&D departments that are embracing OI tend to use it for idea generation and screening during product development life cycle and customers are their primary source of ideas. In terms of staffing for open innovation activities, most respondents employ part-time technology scouts.