The 2021 R&D and Innovation Agenda

The Innovation Habits of High-Growth Companies

The_Innovation_Habits_of_High-Growth_Companies_final_pdf

 

Can large firms innovate? And if so, do high-growth companies innovate differently than others?

In our third-annual R&D and Innovation Agenda study, we searched for answers to these foundational – and sometimes controversial – innovation management questions. To do so, we fielded a quantitative survey of 300 R&D and Innovation leaders at $1B+ firms across industry classes and conducted phone interviews with dozens of executives. Leveraging the data, we built an econometric model for predicting which firm-wide innovation behaviors correlate with above-average revenue growth.

From this research, we’ve discovered that the best-performing companies share four innovation behaviors. In this report, we reveal the practices that help drive breakaway revenue growth and address other general trends in corporate innovation.