Innovation is fundamental to the competitiveness of modern firms. The importance of innovative capabilities is especially pronounced in sectors where significant and pervasive digitisation is creating new opportunities for product differentiation and enhancement, transforming business models, and ushering in a new wave of competition from digital entrepreneurs and technology giants. Firms cannot ignore the imperative to innovate in this new disruptive business environment.

However, you cannot improve what you cannot measure. It also renders it imperative to measure innovation performance and capabilities of the firm continually. Researchers at SRITNE are interested to provide a detailed assessment of the state of innovation in firms with data from a large pharmaceutical firm with global drug development operations in India.

Through archival data, surveys and detailed qualitative interviews with company leadership, SRITNE conducted a detailed assessment of their innovation strategy, culture, and metrics, amongst other parameters to understand the magnitude and nature of innovations in the firm and their contribution. Innovation performance and potential are typically articulated at three levels: Individual, Team, Organisation.

Our analyses help managers to efficiently manage human capital to enable innovation and design more accurate and successful interventions for ongoing innovation and diffusion of ideas in the firm. They are critical to assessing and designing the future innovation trajectory of a firm.

Further, innovation is critical for the competitive advantage of any firm. Given that the study shows that individual and managerial mindsets and interaction between these two is critical for the success of the innovation effort, our study can translate to other contexts in which innovation is critical for the long term success of firms.