New research highlights barriers to innovation
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Sagentia product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Jul 27, 2006
Innovation remains the single biggest barrier amongst UK manufacturers when deciding whether or not to innovate.
A new research report Innovation strategies in UK Enterprises shows that the direct costs associated with innovation remains the single biggest barrier amongst UK manufacturers when deciding whether or not to innovate.
Of the 230 senior decision makers polled, 80 per cent mentioned cost as the main constraining factor.
The research also highlighted economic risks and uncertainty of demand for new products and services as significant reasons not to innovate.
Sponsored by international technology consultancy Scientific Generics and undertaken by Benchmark Research, the objective of the research was to gain a view of innovation activity in UK enterprises and unearth the strategic factors that both contribute and hinder the development of new technologies.
The report makes good and bad reading for the UK's manufacturing base: encouragingly, it shows that eight out of ten firms have introduced products new to their companies in the last three years and that two thirds of these firms also introduced new production or supply processes in the same period.
However, the research also showed that nearly 25 per cent of companies surveyed do not believe that their customers represent an important source of knowledge or information.
Equally worrying is the fact that one third of employers in this sector do not provide staff with any form of innovation training and that nearly half expressed an unwillingness to engage in marketing to support a new product or service.
In addition to identifying the major brakes on innovation; direct costs, economic risk, uncertainty of demand, cost of finance, available finance and lack of qualified staff, the research also shed light on current and future drivers within manufacturing organisations.
Over the past three years, the desire to improve the quality and range of products featured prominently as reasons to innovate.
However, going forward, the research suggests that these reasons will diminish somewhat and be replaced by the desire for increased profitability arising from new markets and/or increased market share.
Commenting on the publication report, Simon Davey, CEO at Scientific Generics, said: "This report highlights once again just how critical innovation is to the long term success of manufacturing industries, not just in the UK but across the developed world".
"While it's encouraging to note that many organisations are now getting the innovation message, it's disappointing that there are many who are still not investing in the basics, for instance innovation training".
"The cost of employment in China is 3 per cent that of the UK".
"We can no longer compete on cost but we can compete if we factor innovation into the equation".
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