Today more than ever companies are operating in a constantly changing world characterized by competition, mergers, acquisitions, and evolving economic climates. Continuous innovation for business sustainability is therefore a must.

Certainly, ideas are not lacking, however, even the most innovative organizations can fail in implementing their innovation strategy. The lack of business capabilities, process maturity, vision, and leadership is undoubtedly a determining factor that can lead to failure. It is not simple for organizations to manage and successfully implement innovation.

In business, innovation is undoubtedly both a leveler and a differentiating element. It can propel startups to scale quickly and compete with established global entities and enable industry leaders to strengthen and develop competitive advantages.

Innovation is powered by technology, which as we know, is digital and decentralized.

What are the key elements necessary for organizations to keep pace with the complexities and speed? How should they act? Which models to follow? How can businesses, regardless of their size, address challenges quickly, efficiently, and at the same time, effectively, and above all, succeed in the most suitable way under the particular circumstances they face?

An operational solution is necessary to embrace complexity in the digital age. The faster the world we live in and the way of doing business change through technology, the more rapidly we must acquire a systemic thinking ability to envision the necessary changes and innovations to lead, adapt, and therefore keep pace.

We must begin to think of organizations as a network of interconnected projects, part of a larger value network that includes stakeholders, partners, suppliers, and above all, customers.

An organization can innovate more effectively and efficiently if all necessary activities and other related or interacting elements are managed as a system.

There are many attributes to consider for the success of an innovation strategy. According to Little (Growth Accelerator Framework), there are a series of critical success factors to consider:

• Growth roadmap: having a vision of each incremental innovation process and the end state.

• Pilot solutions: necessary to learn, test, and modify ideas.

• Organization and processes: concerns the impact on the organization, supply chain, and partners.

• Leadership and culture of change: leadership is necessary to ensure the right decisions at the right time, to manage disruptive impacts and the willingness to change course. It is essential to understand that it is not a one-time event but a continuous journey and to accept failure as an opportunity for improvement.

• Functionality and tools: business growth requires new capabilities to implement the innovation strategy and an equal number of new capabilities to provide and support innovation solutions. The end result must aim to increase business capability.

Innovation thus presents many challenges: organizational, cultural, and social. It is not a lack of ideas; the idea pipeline can be readily filled. However, it is important to have an innovation implementation model that takes into account the necessary iteration cycles to refine the new or improved product or service.

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According to a recent study by Dell Technologies