<p><br><strong>Sam Hunt</strong><br><br>Disruption is everywhere and will affect all organisations. This disruption is being driven at a faster pace and with greater impact than ever before. Large organizations have learned how to survive in the battle for growth within their own segments but are not adequately prepared for the sort of disruption they are now facing.<br><br>This disruption is coming from all sides:<br>1. The technology giants of GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) that are rapidly entering adjacent markets<br>2. The global community of start-up business, now with over 100 totalling greater than $1 billion, that are eating into the lunches of existing players<br>3. The ever-present threat of new market entrants from emerging markets<br><br>In the US this has resulted in 52 per cent of Fortune 500 companies having merged, been acquired or gone bankrupt since 2000. The traditional response of investing in R&D is not working; R&D investments are increasing while the returns are decreasing. Hardly surprising given a recent Forbes study that showed only 5 per cent of the R&D staff felt highly motivated to innovate3.<br><br>What are organizations doing about this?<br>The constant threat of disruption and R&D failure are causing more and more organizations to invest in innovation labs. A Capgemini study found that 38 per cent of the worlds' largest 200 organizations were already creating their own. Read the full report here.<br><br>These labs all have important goals to help their organizations experiment with emerging technologies and to better understand their customers. However they do all feel very similar. Having visited a number of these labs, it is quickly apparent that they all have similar characteristics. Costly real estate in desirable tech global centers, decked out in bright colors and exposed brick. You can almost guarantee that a 3D printer is hiding somewhere!<br><br>While recognising this disruption and making the investment in a lab is a good place to start, many companies are focusing on the lab rather than the end-to-end capabilities required to overcome the disruption and to make innovation a core competency within their business.<br><br>We have learned that in addition to a lab, if an organization is serious about competing among all of this disruption it must also develop the following capabilities:<br>1. Ecosystem stimulation and open innovation management - creating and managing a crowd of interested organizations, start-ups and SMEs engaged in your business problems.<br><br>2. Dev, deploy, test: a DevOps delivery for all innovation projects. Managing the relationship between business critical legacy systems and the rapidly changing test and learn initiatives.<br><br>3. The ability to align stakeholders and make collaborative decisions. This is key to moving out of the pilot phase and to deploy at scale.<br><br>Developing and scaling these capabilities is essential to making the most of the investment in innovation labs, combating disruption and ensuring the future of your organization.<br><br><em>The author is innovation lab director at Capgemini</em><br><br><strong>Twitter:</strong> @Sam_W_Hunt<br><strong>LinkedIn: </strong>http://uk.linkedin.com/in/samwhunt<br><br><em><strong>Disclaimer: </strong>Opinions expressed on this column reflect the writer's views and not the position of the Capgemini Group</em></p>
