Thirty years is a long time in business, but in technology, it’s an eternity. Every year technology advances, making organisations and individuals more creative and productive, enabling us to find solutions to the challenges we face or discover new ways of doing things. At the heart of this ceaseless technology evolution lies innovation. 

Three decades ago, Dell arrived in Australia and since then innovation has been at the core of our business. We’ve never been afraid to disrupt ourselves along the way as we focus on empowering our customers with integrated solutions and expertise to simplify, secure, and responsibly accelerate their own innovation agendas.

The key to innovation is that it’s never one person with a big-bang idea that changes business and society forever. Instead, innovation comes from a diverse team working together and taking pragmatic steps to identify problems, overcome barriers and anticipate customer needs to put themselves in the best competitive position.

As an organisation, we’re also curious, we want to understand what drives innovation, what makes innovation successful and how mature innovation practices work around the world. Which is why we developed the Dell Technologies Innovation Index that provides a powerful, point-in-time snapshot of how businesses are innovating.

The insights we gained showed there’s a “perception gap” here in Australia and New Zealand, with 57% of business leaders worrying their companies won’t be relevant in the next 3-5 years based on their innovation pipeline, while a further 56% believe their technology is not cutting edge.

But innovation is also as much a feature of corporate culture as it is of business processes and technology. In Australia and New Zealand, our research found 57% of respondents believe people leave their company because they haven’t been able to innovate as much as they hoped they would. Worse, 58% say aspects of their company’s culture are holding them back from being as innovative as they can be.

Only a quarter of Australian and New Zealand companies surveyed were found to be innovating effectively, while less than 12% were classified as innovation leaders. Innovation is a process that starts at the top, and company culture is set and modified by leadership. The issue is 71% of respondents say their leaders are more inclined to follow their own ideas than listen to others, while people also say they are often afraid to share their ideas with leaders due to a lack of confidence.

There’s not only opportunity, but also good reasons for Australian and New Zealand companies to double down on innovation. According to our research, we found that compared to innovation laggards and followers, innovation leaders and adopters are 2.6 times more likely to experience high levels of revenue growth; 2.5 times less likely to say they face a skilled IT labour shortage; 2.5 times more likely to accelerate during times of inflation, recession, or economic uncertainty; and 1.2 times more likely to create new customer value through innovation.

In a world where data continues to explode and the application of AI is only going to increase its value, it’s critical for Australian and New Zealand IT decision-makers to use data to drive innovation. Yet, many organisations still face technological barriers to innovation, including an inability to turn data into real-time insights, with only 11% saying they base all their innovation efforts on data. Couple that with the lack of a holistic end-to-end security strategy and it’s never been more important to have the right technology partnerships to turn your ideas into innovations that will drive your innovation growth engine. 

By taking those pragmatic steps, overcoming barriers, and anticipating customer needs, your company and your people will thrive. Innovation begets innovation, and market leaders are in the position to streak ahead.

Yes, thirty years is an eternity in technology, but at Dell, we’re excited to see what the next three decades hold as we deliver our customer-inspired innovation together with our ecosystem of partners and work with you to unleash the superpower of your organisation.