How ready are you for innovation?

Businesses can assess their readiness to use new and emerging technologies with the help of a new free online resource from CompTIA, the leading trade association for the global information technology (IT) industry.

Created by the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community, the Emerging Technology Innovation Assessment helps businesses examine the areas of their operations that are necessary to take advantage of new innovations and to identify what steps are needed to ensure that they are ready to expand their business.

“The excitement generated by new business technology solutions is often tempered by uncertainty over whether a company has the pieces in place to support them,” said Michael Haines, director of partner incentive strategy and program design at Microsoft and chair of the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community. “The assessment we’ve created provides decision-makers with the information they’ll need to determine their organisation’s state of readiness to leverage new innovations.”

The Emerging Technology Innovation Assessment asks businesses to self-evaluate themselves in three areas.

1.      Does the organisation have a Company Culture that fosters an innovative environment built around investment, leadership commitment and employee collaboration and empowerment?

2.      Is an organisational Infrastructure of strategy, vision, alignment, adoption and communication in place to support the adoption of new innovations?

3.      Do the Daily Activities of the business provide employees with the freedom to work in new ways and create different business outcomes?

Each of these categories is scored on a 0-15 scale to determine the company’s readiness for innovation. Strengths, weaknesses and recommendations for next steps are included in the synopsis that each company receives upon completing the assessment.

Recent research from CompTIA finds that a majority of executives (54%) have a positive view of emerging technologies, while 21% expressed equal parts excitement and trepidation. Budget constraints, risk aversion, the lack of a clear business case and confusion about available options are the primary factors that are causing some organisations to take a go-slow approach.

“Customer confusion and uncertainty is understandable given the dizzying speed of innovation and the proliferation of technology options,” said Maddy Martin, head of growth and education for Smith.ai and vice chair of the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community. “We believe the innovation assessment tool can bring some clarity to the conversation about business and emerging tech.”