William Mzimba Chief Executive of Accenture South Africa and Chairman of Accenture Sub-Saharan Africa.IMAGE -GIFT NDOLWANE
JOHANNESBURG – THE pace at which South Africa is innovating needs to accelerate if the country hopes to continue to compete in the 21st century, a leading global professional services company has said.
According to Accenture, innovation has increased by four points in 2016, a pace it said was not required to for a stable economic growth.
The Accenture Innovation Index indicates 57 percent of companies surveyed that scored less than 52 points out of a possible 100 – into the innovation laggard category. Only 29 percent can be categorised as innovation leaders.
However, there is one further category that is truly setting the pace – innovation value champions.
“Digging deeper into the research we found that eight percent of companies are successfully managing to convert innovation into substantial bottom line growth,” said William Mzimba Chief Executive of Accenture South Africa and Chairman of Accenture Sub-Saharan Africa.
“These innovation value champions are seeing returns on their innovations in excess of 40 percent and generate three times more value on their innovation investments than market average.”
According to the Accenture Innovation Index, on average, South African companies invest 13,7 percent of their annual revenues in innovation and realising a 14,5 percent return. Innovation value champions invest 17,8 percent of revenues and their average return is 42,6 percent – almost three times higher than the market average.
Headquartered in Ireland, Accenture provides a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations.
– Guardian
