3,100 executives were interrogated in 25 different countries for the GE Innovation Barometer. It appears that Canada is in the forefront for innovation, along with Germany, the United States and Japan.
According to Canadian executives, better collaboration is one of the main factors of effective innovation policy. 85% of them rely on it to position themselves in new markets (or 6% more than the average of 25 countries surveyed by GE), and 83% to improve existing products or services (8% more than the average). The problem? Despite this opinion, only 11% of Canadian executives interviewed believe that their companies would be ready to share revenues from this collaboration. This is the lowest figure of the study – the global average is around 28%.
To successfully innovate, the main factors identified by Canadian executives are attracting and retaining innovative employees (88%), creating an environment and culture conducive to innovation (80%), and raising challenges about work habits (69%). It should be noted that new products are not the only goal of innovation policies; 76% of Canadians interviewed (or 13% more than the average) think that development of new processes should result in a profit.
Among the concerns uppermost in the minds of Canadian executives in terms of innovation are protection of privacy and intellectual property (68%) and lack of confidence (64%).