A recent survey from PwC found that the 20 percent of industrial manufacturing companies that are the most innovative are growing much faster than the least innovative companies. The most innovative companies grew revenues 38 percent over the past three years, while the least grew 10 percent, according to the report.
Arguably, innovation is critical to a manufacturer’s future – and is becoming more critical as automation transforms factory floors and technology fuels new ways of approaching old problems.
The PwC report contends that innovation must become a priority for industrial manufacturers, and they must have what the report calls an “innovation roadmap.” Why? The most innovative companies are getting three times as much revenue from new products and services, the survey found.
What’s more, many of the industrial manufacturing executives in the survey said they expect to have to generate most of their growth organically moving forward, shifting away from global expansion. Read the report from PwC here.
In a recent episode of MDM’s Executive Briefing, Chester Collier, senior vice president for global distribution for Walter Surface Technologies, talks about why innovation is so critical in today’s markets, starting at about 5:52 in the clip below.
“Why is this market – the industrial market – so slow to adopt innovation sometimes?” Collier asks. “It seems that innovation gets adopted out of necessity and not because people see the opportunity.
“If someone else does it we will adopt that innovation, but up until that time we have a hesitancy to do it.”
