Critical Issues
Navigate the future of growth and
innovation with confidence.
innovation with confidence.
2023 Critical Issues
Each year, Council members vote on the most important issues facing their industry, in their region of the globe. The annual Critical Issues become the key areas of focus for member discussion and Council events throughout the year.
Americas’ Critical Issues
Developing Capabilities to Benefit from New Business Opportunities
Areas of Focus:
- Accelerating the timeline from ideation to end state
- Managing the organization’s risk appetite
- Identifying, validating, and prioritizing opportunity models including acquisitions, partnerships, and synergistic relationships
Embracing Opportunities of Disruptive Technologies
Areas of Focus:
- Scenario visioning to develop and early warning system mitigating future risk
- Leveraging AI-driven technologies to create efficiencies
- Enabiling disruption via digital transformation
Growing Beyond Core Customers and Brands
Areas of Focus:
- Developing new customer segments to extend your core
- Growing your brand through adjacencies to create market relevancy
- Getting buy-in from the sales organization
- Creating a frictionless customer journey
Creating a Dynamic Culture of Innovation
Areas of Focus:
- Using fast fail methodologies instead of linear methods of innovation
- Encouraging stakeholder’s embrace of and risk appetite for breakthrough innovation
- Building a culture of continuous improvement
Strategic Planning for 2030 and Beyond
Areas of Focus:
- Being agile in response to changing external factors
- Keeping up with the fast pace of change
- Aligning the organization for your top competitive priorities
Leveraging Data Insights to Drive Decision Making
Areas of Focus:
- Data transformation for effective problem solving
- Acquiring and consuming data to create and develop new business models
- Connecting data lakes to derive insights
APAC’s & MEASA’s Critical Issues
Future of Work and Talent
Area of Focus:
- Hybrid working will become the new normal
- Addressing recruitment and retention challenges amidst The Great Resignation
- Evolving compensation and incentive expectations
- Identifying different ways of attracting talent that is aligned with company culture
- Unearth and provide use cases on digitisation of talent management
- Hybrid working – What are the pros and cons? Remote working challenges
- How do you sustain a company culture and values with hybrid working
- Future of digital leadership – its influence on future of work
- Future of learning and skills
- New working environment for the industrial / factory environment in this talent war
Business Model Strategy
Area of Focus:
- Outcomes-based business models – Transition playbook for business model changes
- Rise of everything-as-a-service and strategies to help build consumption based models
- Review full range of business models
- Including data monetization (actual monetization that goes beyond data leverage)
- Need to look at customer procurement model and buying behavior in the context of new business models
- Need to understand near term versus long term impact of both emerging technologies and business models
Rationalizing Risk in Innovation
Area of Focus:
- Tracking/reporting innovation activities – Risk mitigation, readiness, business unit alignment
- Generative and iterative portfolios – Establishing a process to effectively balance priorities
- Innovation priorities outside the core
- Smart risk management and risk transfer
- Is this incremental or transformative – market requirement
- Is it in line with the pace of innovation across the industry, readiness of the market to deliver consumer experience
- Will this drive efficiency, streamline the way to GTM
- Future proof innovation – technology, product
- Innovation does not alienate while upgrading, backward and forward compatibility
- Organic or inorganic approach to innovation, through acquisitions. Risks around data and IP
- Quality of innovation while catering to the customer
- Manage risk from product portfolio risk
- Ventures within organisations – manpower fluidity
- Regulation on innovation, standardization lacking
Go-to-Market Strategy
Area of Focus:
- Validating value perception and reality
- Commercializing the value in an optimal way
- Identifying true value propositions
- Outcome based models can really work
- Digital channels and marketing
- Subscription model and increasing the value of product over time
- Battery subscription, for example
- Inviting investors to any country (Thailand). Digital channel can be an effective format to reach and connect with population
- Telecommunications companies can be effective partners to build demand
Translating Consumer Trends into Business Opportunities
Area of Focus:
- Building digital trust – Assessing willingness of customers to share Personally Identifiable Information (PII) through digital platforms
- Effect of economic uncertainty on business purchasing and planning decisions across key consumer groups
- Identifying and working with the new segment of customers – kids and adolescent population
- Who is the real customer and what influences them? What does the customer really want from a product perspective?
- How to seamlessly shift to subscription based business models according to changing / shifting customer aspirations ( mega technology company perspective )
- In the healthcare space, how to take a direct to patient approach like taking the clinical capabilities to the patient
- Circular economy – what does it mean for industrial customers and their future supply chains
Integrating New Disruptive Technologies into Your Innovation Portfolio
Area of Focus:
- Explore advancements in HMI (human machine interfaces), computing power and the impact to business
- Integrating AI-ML/AR-VR/block chain as part of the business strategy (explore use cases within each area and determine ‘best fit’)
- Impact of technology on environment post-COVID (e.g. clean air, water)
- Need to evaluate how technologies make the process better/leading to better solutions for customers
- Need to leverage technology to enhance customer experience
- Needs to be more than digitalization –
- Traditional technologies beyond Digital Transformation
- For ex: – more focus on electrification for mobility
- Leverage Top 50 Technologies
- Traditional technologies beyond Digital Transformation