Accenture, a leading financial consultancy firm, has unveiled the Nigeria Innovation Index for 2018.
It has been described as the first of its kind in the country.
Accenture partnered with over 250 researchers to discover leading innovative solutions.
They expect the survey to improve the performance of players in banking and FinTech space.
The Index also seeks to highlight and showcase innovation role models who are inculcating innovation into the very culture of their organisations, as well as creating products, processes, people and service innovations.
The firm believes that Innovation is the translation of a good idea into a tangible outcome- financial, social, or environmental- which supports the creation of stakeholder value.
Niyi Yusuf, the country Managing Director, Accenture Nigeria, said that for Nigeria to boost productivity, economic prosperity and improve its growth prospects, it should leverage on innovation.
Yusuf said that in today’s highly competitive markets, innovation was critical for having an upper hand.
“Ideas are the new currency, but having good ideas is not good enough.
“Organisation who retain and grow market share are those who generate better ideas and implement them at a faster pace. It is only organisations that seamlessly integrate innovation into everything they do that will achieve sustainable growth and retain competitive advantage,’’ he said.
Yusuf noted that banks and fintechs that participated in the maiden Accenture Nigeria innovation Index, provided insight on how they leveraged innovation to stabilise and drive growth for maximum benefit.
He said that on average, organisations invest 35 per cent of annual revenues in innovation and realise a 40.5 per cent return. However a few outliers invest 22 per cent of revenues and achieve returns of 61 per cent, 1.5 times the market average.
“As we dug deeper to understand what they do differently to achieve such returns on their innovations, a number of key themes stood out as differentiating factors.
Strategy, innovative culture, talent, collaboration, business Intelligence and digital innovation leaders scored significantly higher across these areas than other organizations,” he noted.
Thirteen banks and 17 fintechs participated in the maiden edition of the Nigeria Innovation Index.
Wema Bank got the award for innovation masters and innovation concepts, sharing the award for strategy, ideation and absorption with Access Bank.
Flutter Eave and Paystack, under the fintech category, got the award for strategy and absorption.
Flutter wave also got an award for innovation masters.
