Media must drive innovation awareness

The forum coincided with the release of the results of South Africa's Innovation Scorecard, a quantitative assessment of corporate coverage on innovation in the country's leading media. Panelists included Sokutu, Jankovich, Media Tenor CEO Wadim Schreiner, innovationTOWN co-founder Mandy de Waal and journalists Renee Bonorchis, Sasha Planting and Graeme Addison.

African Bank executive director Tami Sokutu said the country faces a real challenge to develop a greater awareness of innovation at all levels of society. This was “critical” to improving South Africa's global competitiveness and its ability to create a new socio-economic order.

However, says Deloitte analyst Thomas Jankovich, many companies are still struggling to define what innovation is, how they will make it happen within their organisations, and what questions to ask when it comes to starting the process of innovation.

“There is no single cookie cutter approach to defining innovation, or to making it happen,” Jankovich told the forum. “But there's no doubt that the moment you are seen to stop delivering on an expectation of ongoing innovation, as has happened recently to companies like Microsoft and Dell, your business will suffer as a result.”

More aware of need

Schreiner, who partnered with innovationTOWN to create the Innovation Scorecard, said the results showed that not only were South African companies becoming more aware of the need for innovation in modern business, but also of the need to present these stories to a broader audience.

“However, South African companies still rely far too heavily on business and financial results to drive positive coverage in the local media. By comparison, other key issues that affect stakeholder confidence – like BEE, innovation and market position – get negligible attention,” said Schreiner.

The scorecard uses a quantitative assessment of corporate coverage on innovation in leading media to identify issues around innovation, and highlights a number of key challenges that are affecting innovation performance in South African businesses.

These include a shortage of skilled and educated people; a relative lack of business research and development spending; a poor enabling environment for small entrepreneurs; and the need to raise awareness among companies of the benefits of an innovation-based strategy to build shareholder value.

Wake-up call

African Bank's Sokutu said the recent boom in the country's economy had almost taken peoples' focus off the need for innovative approaches, and South Africa's slide down the global competitiveness rankings should serve as a wake-up call to industry.

“We must find new ways of doing things if we are to cement our place in the international arena,” said Sokutu. “We should draw on the immense political innovations that have brought us here to take better advantage of our resources, both human and otherwise. This is where the media has an important role to play in creating awareness of innovation, and driving it as an issue in the minds of business decision-makers and the public.”

Bonorchis said part of the reason why the financial media wasn't picking up on innovation as an issue was that the market doesn't reward innovation stories. Shareholders and analysts are simply interested in spectacular growth. Companies are also not always telling their innovation stories as well as they could.

Addison, who has written three books on innovation in SA, says companies must learn to tell an emotive story of innovation to the media, and not just a technical story.

“It's very difficult to change the agenda of the media when it comes to reporting on innovation,” said Addison. “Part of the problem is that small businesses are the engine of innovation in South Africa – but they just don't have the ability, time or energy to get their stories into the media. The fact is that great innovators shake up the world, and we should be celebrating them far more than we do.”

Never been more pressing

The need to drive innovation more strongly has never been more pressing, says Planting, who has ploughed a lone furrow for innovation-related issues at the Financial Mail for the past few years. She cites the example of the local textile and clothing industry, which practically collapsed through its inability to invest in innovative technologies, processes and people.

“The clothing and textile industry was grossly negligent in failing to do the research and development that it needed to deliver a better range of products and compete with cheap imports. The national fallout of this industry's failure to innovate was huge, with the effects being felt to this day,” said Planting.

De Waal, co-founder of Innovation Scorecard partner innovationTOWN, said that innovation is always a good story to present to the media, and gives stakeholders confidence that the company has a good business strategy.

“The economic powerhouses of the world today are driven by technology and innovation,” said De Waal. “With the basis for international competitiveness shifting towards knowledge-based factors, South Africa's future competitiveness depends on strengthening its innovation capacity and creating more knowledge-based businesses across the entire economy.”

Click here to download Innovation Scorecard corporate results doc.

Click here to download Innovation Scorecard media results doc.