Helping Your Organization Be More Innovative
Fifty years ago, a company on the S&P 500 would last over 50 years, today, they will be lucky to last 15 years. Companies are scaling faster and failing faster than ever before. Innovation and the ability for organizations to appropriately leverage disruptive technologies is emerging as a key strategic differentiator for organizations as they “navigate their future”. Innovation is a process, like any other. It requires organizational discipline and focus. Boards and management are increasingly asking their organizations to be more innovative but is there a clear understanding across the organization of what that means? A company’s ability to innovate is becoming a key risk to the organization with the speed of change organizations are now facing. As with any key risk, internal audit can play a role by assessing the innovation process. In a recent Deloitte study, only 13% of organizations surveyed were highly prepared for the disruption that is being created by exponential technologies that include: advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, networks and sensors, advanced manufacturing and collaborative connected platforms and a third of businesses are not prepared at all. Further, given the productivity challenge in Canada, Canadian companies are particularly vulnerable to disruption. Internal audit is being challenged to provide increasing value to their organizations. Internal audit can play a strategic role in assessing and making recommendations for improvements to their organization’s ability to create the right processes to support innovation. This presentation will provide a definition of innovation and key high level examples of exponential technologies and business models with examples of impacts to business processes and key considerations for internal audit.