Disruption is becoming a persistent way of life and a vast majority of businesses have been impacted by the disruption.
“We are all living in an unprecedented time of business disruption and in that business disruption; we need clarity about what we want on our technology and business investments,” Annette Rippert, senior managing director for technology at Accenture North America, said at the Oracle OpenWorld 2019.
It is important to understand how it [disruption] impacts the business and “we have done some extensive research to unravel insights about the disruptive forces that have taken place in business.”
She said that 71% of 10,000 companies Accenture analysed were undergoing some sort of significant disruption.
To survive in this environment, she said that it is very clear that incremental change is not a direction to overcome that disruption. In fact, what is required is a “breakthrough”.
“Organisations that are looking to breakthrough disruption have to think about how they are going to get there. You need breakthroughs in three key areas - innovation, investment and people. How did you use these key areas to change and to control strategy within your organisation,” she said.
Out of the three key areas, she said that the investment pivot is the key to fuel the investment needed to fuel innovation.
The importance of why
The investment breakthroughs use innovation to flip the investment curve; she said and added that most of the IT budget that is spent today is for maintaining old systems.
According to Accenture, it is around 70% for most companies and the rest is spent on innovation.
“What happens if you flip the investment curve and spend 70% on innovation? That is a major breakthrough and would fuel your innovation pivot,” she said.
However, she said that one of the most important things is “people”.
How are you positioning your company to enable world-class leaders to make world-class decisions?
To change a culture, she said that people need to understand the fundamental reasoning of “why”. “Knowing 'why' matters a lot. Once we know why, then it is essential to have the talent that is going to deliver on that strategy,” she said.
