From a recently conducted Global CEO Study by IBM who took a comprehensive, global look at a topic that is increasingly important to leaders worldwide: innovation. Based on in-person interviews with more than 750 of the world's top CEOs, the study included views of business and public sector leaders from 20 different industries and 11 geographic regions, representing both mature markets and developing markets such as China, India, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Participants were remarkably frank, sharing their deep insights on innovation. We learned for example, that two-thirds of them expect to drive fundamental changes within their organisations in the next two years. Surprisingly undaunted by this challenge, they see innovation as a means to seize opportunities.

One key finding was that 76 per cent of CEOs thought that external collaboration, primarily with business partners and customers, is key to innovation. This contrasts greatly with their view of internal R&D, which was cited by only 17 per cent of CEOs as a major source of innovation and new ideas.

In terms of most significant sources of innovative ideas, see figure below which details the results:

Amongst the most interesting conclusions for me was:
Ignite innovation thorough business and technology integration. Use technology as an innovation catalyst by combining it with business and market insights. Technology can be a catalyst - both to drive innovation and to enable it. It can play a vital part in new products, services, channels, market-entry strategies, operational transformation and industry -altering business models. Technology can even enable other innovation enablers such as collaboration.

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