Innovation Becoming Higher Priority in Global Companies The Conference Board did some sort of survey of 100 global companies which has had some interesting results:

- 70% hold innovation in high regard

- 90% say innovation is integrated into strategic goals

- 55% (only??) have expanded their definition of innovation to include business model, strategy and process innovation.

- Although 80% of surveyed companies have central R&D units, on average, only 55% of innovation originates from inside the companies themselves

- Companies are encouraging a wider array of employees to collect information from their customers and solicit ideas from the broad employee population (nothing new there - this has been a common practice for quite a while now amongst leading innovators)

- Globality is becoming more important - 40% say that internal teams have global membership (presumeably then, overcoming problems in language difference is becoming increasingly important)

- 60% of HR people say they have a formal process for gathering ideas from employees, and the number of ideas (as well as the financial payoffs from implementation) are increasing.

- About 40% of firms now say they have someone who fills the role of a Chief Innovation Officer - although in many cases it is the head of R&D or the CTO...