Future Latin American business leaders recognize importance of innovation, few believe they are being encouraged

Peru – Seventy-five percent of future business leaders in Latin America believe innovation is essential for business growth and 84 percent believe the success of a business should be measured by more than just financial performance, according to the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) Latin America Millennial (Generation-Y) survey. However, only 18 percent of Generation-Y respondents believe that their organization’s leadership encourages and rewards idea generation and creativity.

“The survey results illustrate how much importance future business leaders across Latin America place on innovation—not just as a driver of business growth but also as a catalyst for solving society’s most pressing problems,” said Deloitte Latin America CEO, Carlos Haehnel. “Organizations must do all they can to ensure that innovation at the institutional level can sufficiently shift an organization’s mindset to allow new ideas to truly emerge and thrive.”

The Latin America survey consisted of nearly 2,000 responses from Generation-Y in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. The top challenges facing society over the next 20 years were considered to be resource scarcity (48 percent), consequences of natural disasters (32 percent), and climate change (30 percent). In comparison to the global results, natural disasters and climate change came further down the priority list (inflation, for example, was 2nd) which indicates a different global outlook within Latin America.

Innovating for societal good

The business community is regarded as playing a lead role in developing innovations that will benefit society. Forty-one percent of the Generation-Y respondents believe that businesses drive the innovations that most positively impact society. This was followed by academic bodies, which received more mentions in Latin America (24 percent) as compared to the global study (17 percent). Additionally 96 percent say it is acceptable for business to make a profit from an innovation that ’benefits society’, which was similar to the global study results (95 percent).

Talent as a catalyst for innovation

Innovation is also an important component of talent recruitment and retention. Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of the Generation-Y respondents surveyed say innovation is a key factor in making an organization an employer of choice. This is particularly relevant to many companies, attracting the ever-growing number of Generation-Y, who are forecasted to make up 75 percent of the world’s workforce by 2025.

However, discrepancies were found when Generation-Y respondents in Latin America were asked about the requirements for innovation:

• 40 percent of respondents believe that encouragement and rewards for idea generation and creativity is a requirement for innovation to occur, whereas only 18 percent say their current organization operates in this way.
• 34 percent say providing employees with free time to dedicate to learning and creativity is key to an innovative environment, versus 16 percent who characterize their workplace that way.
• 26 percent consider openness and the freedom to challenge as key to innovation, versus 13 percent who say this is visible in their organizations.
• 34 percent believe in the importance of encouraging innovative thinking at all levels of the organization, versus 20 percent who describe their places of employment that way.

• The sectors considered to be responsible for the most innovations (Latin America vs. global) are: technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) (59 vs. 52 percent), consumer goods/services (50 vs. 47 percent), and manufacturing (27 vs. 37 percent).
• The sectors considered to be most in need of innovations (Latin America vs. global) are: education (45 vs. 27 percent), electric power (20 vs. 18 percent), and health care providers (19 vs. 16 percent).
• Respondents in the BRIC countries consider themselves and their companies to be innovative, while respondents from Japan place their companies at the bottom in nearly every aspect of innovation. For example, 70 percent of respondents within the BRIC countries rate their employers as innovative, while only 25 percent of respondents in Japan did so.
• Regionally, seven in ten (71 percent) would describe themselves as innovative, ranging from Peru (83 percent), Brazil (77 percent), Colombia (71 percent), Mexico (71 percent), Chile (66 percent), and Argentina (59 percent).
• Seventy-three percent of respondents in the region feel their company’s activities benefit society, led by Brazil (83 percent), Colombia (78 percent), Mexico (76 percent), Chile (70 percent), Argentina (66 percent), and Peru (65 percent).