What strategy & innovation teams are worrying about in Q2

What are other strategy, innovation, and research leaders’ top priorities, challenges, and needs when it comes to getting data and insights needed for better decisions and strategies…?

What are each of these functions tasked with accomplishing in 2024 – potentially beyond the usual “generate revenue” and “ship new products”? 

We’ve spent Q1 doing a ton of market research on, well, market research to understand all of this.

So today, with Q2 just days away, we’re sharing a sneak peek of our findings: a roundup of top priorities and dynamics among leading strategy and innovation teams.

Revenue generation through new products, services or solutions tends to be the top responsibility of these functions by a wide margin. 

That said, UX researchers are (unsurprisingly) 2x more likely to be focused on improving customer satisfaction (45% vs. 19% overall) and half as likely to be focused on revenue generation through new products, services or solutions (26% vs. 44% overall).

But there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to leadership's biggest concern or priority for these functions in 2024:

Talent, differentiation, innovation, and customer experience are all top of mind, but so is AI and how to best leverage it to stay competitive and operate more efficiently. More on what leaders had to say on that here.

Innovation leaders are on average 2x more likely to be AI-savvy already, while strategy leaders are generally less comfortable with AI-powered tools.

92% say their company is future forward, strategic, and takes a long-term perspective vs. is tactical and short-term focused – in line with the types of research we see submitted through Wonder every day.

90% say their company is more proactive than reactive.

And 79% say their company is more focused on maximizing upside / opportunities than minimizing downside / risks.

Most of this probably isn’t surprising to you – these findings all generally reflect best practices (if not table stakes) when it comes to driving growth through smart strategy and impactful innovation.

What WAS surprising? The tools leading teams are (and aren’t) using, what types of research they know they should be doing more of, and what’s stopping them from getting it done.

More on this next week!
Victoria