Deloitte in the Netherlands is one of the frontrunners in corporate innovation, having started out with a separate innovation entity ten years ago already. To celebrate, the innovation department of the consultancy firm shares five fundamental lessons about corporate innovation after a decade of trial and error.
Why would you innovate as a company? The answer is simple: to survive. The lifespan of companies is decreasing at a rapid rate. When you compare the Fortune 500 from 1955 with that of 2016, you see that only sixty companies have managed to keep their place on this list – or 12 percent. In the meantime, the other 88 percent have since gone bankrupt, been taken over or fallen off the list. This trend is also apparent in the S&P 500 Index. Where companies remained in this ranking for an average of 33 years in 1965, by 1990 this had fallen to 20 years. According to the consultancy Innosight, by 2026 companies will only stay in the S&P 500 for 14 years, and half of all companies in this ranking will be replaced within ten years. In short, there is no reason to assume that the major players of today will still be relevant in the future.