Digital divides global business in face of war and pandemic

Businesses that deliver digital innovation will emerge as leaders in their respective market sectors, creating a divide between organisations that can scale development and delivery and those that cannot, according to new research.

International Data Corporation (IDC) gives details of this digital divide in its FutureScape report, which presents information about technologies, markets, and ecosystems that help CIOs better understand future trends and their impacts on business.

The most recent IDC FutureScape report makes 10 predictions derived from these drivers, analyses the impacts on the IT organisation, and proposes recommendations for the next five years. 

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how digital technology and innovation can deliver resiliency, revenue, and opportunity to the enterprise in the face of crisis, say IDC researchers. Additional global challenges including war, inflation, recession, and supply chain disruptions mean enterprise relationships with technology will be more critical than ever. 

“As enterprises transition from digital transformation technology investment strategies to focusing on running digital businesses, a critical enabler will be the ability to innovate by developing differentiated and disruptive technologies,” they say.

Data and data analytics will play increasingly important roles, and companies that acquire the right data sets and apply the right analytics to derive key insights will be the most successful.

The rate of innovation in organisations with excellent enterprise intelligence was on average 250 per cent faster than in organisations with poor enterprise intelligence, according to IDC's August 2021 Future of Intelligence Survey. 

IDC's top 10 predictions for the Future of Connectedness 2022 are:

1.  By 2024, the top five companies in each sector will be those that used technology to innovate their way out of a global crisis such as a recession or supply chain disruption.
2. By 2026, 10 per cent of companies will successfully incentivise consumers to share closely held data to devise nontraditional offerings, improve customer experience, and grow market share.
3. By 2024, 35 per cent of businesses that build innovative algorithms to glean intelligence from unique data sets will deliver successful new product offerings and pricing models and tap new customer segments.
4. By 2028, new efficiencies will allow developers to increase the share of time they spend on innovation from 25 per cent of their development-related work to 75 per cent.
5. By 2028, recurring revenue from smart products will make up 65 per cent of revenue for companies that sell "dumb" and "smart" versions of the same products.
6. By 2026, 75 per cent of market leaders will have systemic, structured digital innovation programs and investments that support ongoing iterative innovation, enabling growth, scale, agility, and resilience.
7. By 2026, companies that share data with business partners to leverage their collective data sets for new revenue potential will grow revenue 10 per cent faster than those that don't.
8. 85 per cent of CEOs of the G2000 will demand senior leaders deliver data-driven insight into innovation activity including developer efficiency and business outcomes by 2025.
9. In 2027, the share of non-technology-focused people in companies who will spend 10 hours or more a week contributing to digital innovation will grow from five per cent today to 45 per cent.
10. In 2028, 15 large companies will make headlines for using digital technologies to manipulate customer experiences to spur upgrades and replacements.

"If the pandemic didn't force an organisation to pivot toward digital innovation, the multitude of current headwinds ranging from inflation to war should," says Nancy Gohring, Research Director, Future of Digital Innovation at IDC. "Winners and losers in each sector will be determined by their ability to deliver digital innovation at scale — ethically, sustainably, and repeatedly."