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Innovation isn’t happening fast enough for most executives, according to Boston Consulting Group’s fourth annual study on innovation — and there are some key implications for marketers.

Only 46 percent of the 2,500 executive surveyed said they were satisfied with returns on innovation spending. The place they think innovation is most important (listen up marketers):

• New offerings for existing customers (92%)
• Offerings that allow expansion to new new customers (85%)

The biggest obstacles to innovation: speed in going from idea to sales, risk averse cultures and overly lengthy development times.

The question for marketing is how do we tap into customer insights all the time to be constantly finding new ways to appeal to existing and new customers, and then how do we collaborate with other business functions to speed product development. How can we rip out processes that are designed to mitigate risk but actually choke the innovation process? If you have an innovative idea but it takes 18 months to bring it to market, it may not be innovative by the time it gets to market.

On a related note, the most difficult business function for marketing to collaborate with by far is IT, according to a new Forrest Research project, “Partnering for Success: The CMO-CIO Relationship.” The top challenges for marketing in working with IT, which tie right back to innovation:

• Slow time to market and speed in completing projects
• Rigid processes and an aversion or inability to change

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