On Innovation: Canadian Companies are Not ‘Walking the Talk’!

November 6th, 2013 | ACA Team,

By Susan Charles, ACA

marketers-pulse-noACAlogoThe September/October 2013 ACA Marketer’s Pulse Report focuses on marketing innovation. It explores the innovation culture within Canadian companies, for their strategic initiatives, organization structure and budget commitments.

The questions were developed by Bert DuMars, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, who believes successful organizations must build a marketing innovation foundation and culture to retain and/or gain a competitive advantage in the new world order.

The survey found that Canadian companies are not ‘walking the talk’! As a general observation, innovation strategy initiatives are being considered but are lacking support of organization structure and budget commitment.

Here are some key highlights from this report:

  1. Canadian companies scored innovation strategies highest, but are not supporting these initiatives with organization structure or budget commitments.
  2. When plotted along an innovation culture spectrum, the vast majority of Canadian marketers rated their company’s innovation as being somewhere in the mid-range. These scores indicate that there is significant development required to optimize their innovation cultures and reach the ‘customer obsessed’ state.
  3. Strategically, marketers are open to innovation ideas and to set goals, but the processes behind this are less well established.
  4. From an organization structure perspective, Canadian marketers are willing to invite people to engage in pilot projects of innovation, but do not support dedicating resources or infrastructure, or integrating these efforts back into the organization.
  5. Further, Canadian companies are not committing budgets to support innovation initiatives and, therefore, will jeopardize opportunities to gain competitive advantage versus their competition.
  6. In comparison to US results from a similar survey, Canadian marketers rate themselves as having a moderately higher developed innovation culture on all 3 categories of strategy, organization structure and budget commitments.

Read the full report. (members only)

Read Bert DuMars’ article on innovation.


About the ACA Marketer’s Pulse Report:
ACA seeks input from senior Canadian marketers to provide valuable insights into Canadian marketing dynamics. The ACA Marketers’ Pulse Panel, comprised of senior Canadian marketers, shares what they are thinking, planning and experiencing at their workplaces, and with their suppliers, partners and consumers. The panel is asked questions about their current business conditions, perceptions and strategic priorities. The ACA Marketer’s Pulse Report provides the results of this and future surveys.

To learn more about the ACA Marketer’s Pulse Report, contact Susan Charles, Vice President, Member Services at ACA.