What about the innovation location Europe? To answer this question, we interviewed a total of 760 companies in 16 countries. The results have now been published.
Exploring the community
We have explored what it really is about innovation in Europe by asking 760 companies from 20 industries and 16 European countries about their status quo, their future plans and related innovation challenges.
“Innovations have always been the basis for the economic success of companies and thus also for employment, prosperity and quality of life in a society. We need innovation to meet the challenges of the future and Europe’s companies have understood that”, explains Nicolai Andersen, Head of Innovation at Deloitte.
The main results of the survey
88 percent of the companies surveyed want to invest more in innovation over the next two years.
12 percent want to keep the current level.
A reduction in the innovation budget is planned by none of the companies.
Technology as the most important driver of innovation
The concept of innovation, however, leaves a certain room for interpretation. The survey also wanted to know what “innovation” means for the companies surveyed.
For European companies, it’s all about technology. For 92 percent of respondents, this is the most important driver of innovation. In a relatively short period of about 20 years, new digital technologies have fundamentally changed or even made obsolete a number of traditional business models and created new ones.
“Digital transformation puts technology at the center of business and business”, says Alexander Börsch, chief economist at Deloitte.
“Economic value creation is shifting further towards development and software. That makes innovation easier to scale and therefore even more valuable”.
Clear trend towards artificial intelligence
Technology and innovation go hand in hand in Europe. The focus is on data analytics and cloud computing. 69, or 62 percent, of the companies surveyed are already investing here. However, the survey shows a clear trend towards artificial intelligence (AI). 42 percent of European companies want to implement AI projects in the next two years. But also augmented and virtual reality, robot-controlled process automation and blockchain are important topics for the companies.
“In the future, there is an increasing need to build bridges between digital technologies and traditional industries where European companies are strong. A good example of this is the robotics industry, which has its roots in classic mechanical engineering but has been boosted by the application of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence. In such innovation-driven transformation processes are huge opportunities for European companies – they only have to use them”.