The Savoy, London | February 21, 2024

The theme of LatentView’s 2024 Analytics Roundtable in London, England—the 17th edition of the event—was “The New ROI: Return on Innovation; Connecting the Dots Between Business Investment and Value Creation With AI and Analytics.”

Welcome Note

Rajan Sethuraman
CEO, LatentView Analytics
Everyone in business and technology talks about innovation and agrees it’s important. More than 80 percent of leaders at digitally mature companies cite innovation as a strength of the organization. However important, innovation is not something that just happens. In fact, it’s often tempting for companies to embrace inertia and hope that past new products and services will fuel success indefinitely. Innovation requires companies to listen to consumers and the market, to experiment (and embrace failure along the way) – and, most importantly – to use data to connect the dots. Data not only underpins decision-making, but is also paramount to measuring the return on innovation.
As both a pure-play analytics company and strategic thought partner, LatentView partners with companies to help them understand, maximize, and measure their return on innovation. The company’s advantage is its deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that face key industries, including Retail/CPG, Financial Services, Industrials, and Technology, coupled with a legacy of leadership in analytics and data science.

Keynote Address

Measuring Innovation's Impact

A Conversation With Unilever's Global Head of R&D Digital & Partnerships

Speaker
Alberto Prado
VP, Head of Digital & Partnerships,
Unilever R&D
Speaker
Krishnan Venkata
Chief Client Officer,
LatentView Analytics
Innovation is somewhat of an abstract concept and exists on a spectrum. It can be accidental, such as the invention of Cornflakes. It can be inspired, like the idea and creation of the Google Search Engine. It can be incremental, like the evolution of the Sony Walkman in the 1970s to the wireless Apple AirPods of today. Regardless of the type, one thing is clear: companies can’t just wait for innovation to happen. Even “accidental” innovation is the result of experimentation–albeit sometimes with totally unexpected results.
Disney’s chief executive Bob Iger put it very bluntly: “Innovate or die, and there’s no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new or untested.” According to Krishnan Venkata, innovation requires companies to build and cultivate an innovation-driven culture. This means making innovation a priority across people, processes, and technology. It also requires adopting an agile, nimble, fail-fast approach. Most importantly, it means staying ahead of the curve by spotting trends early.
The throughline for any innovation-driven culture is data. Companies must embed data into all innovation-related decision-making. The ability to use data to spot consumer trends and stay ahead of the curve gives companies a winning advantage. There are a lot of examples of data-driven innovation in action. Coca-Cola, for example, expanded its brand portfolio with the recent launch of Raspberry spiced Coke–a new product that resulted directly from consumer data. So Krishnan emphasizes that return on insights drives return on innovation, and it is crucial to act on the insights drawn from data.
Alberto Prado from Unilever says that the innovation environment has dramatically changed for his company. Some of their brands have 100 years of history, and they are faced with the reality that consumers have and continue to change. Things like sustainability and better nutrition are top concerns. The ability to predict these and other consumer trends requires a holistic strategy. It means optimizing at speed but also thinking about the return on innovation beyond just how much revenue something can generate.
For Unilever, this holistic strategic approach to data-driven innovation is captured for one of their leading ice cream ranges. The old way of garnering consumer insights was limited to in-person focus groups tasting different flavor samples–taking months on end, but, in the digital age, innovation needs to happen much faster. Working with LatentView, they were able to leverage 22,000+ data points to uncover preferences around calorie-conscious choices and fruit flavors while still retaining its original USP.
The keynote stressed on data being the backbone of innovation and how the future belongs to those who adopt a data-driven approach.

Panel discussion

From Insights to Market Success

Unlocking Business Impact With AI-driven Innovation

Moderator
Sanjay Annadate
Business Head – Europe & UK,
LatentView Analytics
Speaker
Andrew Phillips
Global Head of Data Insights,
Apex Group
Speaker
Daniel Majewski
Global Head of Strategy, R&D
and System Solutions
CVS ZF Group
Speaker
Siggy Simon
Leader,
Digital Transformation in Countries,
Decathlon International

Across the board, business trailblazers, including McKinsey, EY, and PwC, agree that scaling Generative AI (GenAI) initiatives is among the top priorities for boards and CEOs in 2024. Over the past 12 months or more, GenAI’s potential has become abundantly clear. It can be used to draw conclusions about large data sets, personalize customer interactions at scale, and augment business offerings in a way that, done manually, once seemed impossible.

But the question remains: how do business leaders translate grand ideas into impact-driving programs? If 2023 was the year to explore AI’s potential, 2024 is the year to jump into action.  

Ultimately, action requires a strong roadmap. McKinsey has defined the outset of 2024 as a landscape for business leaders to capitalize on the “Three-sided productivity opportunity.” The organization cited these three things: Upskill talent and change how you work, offset higher prices, wages, and interest rates, and invest in capital, technology, and innovation as ”an essential component of successful digital and AI transformations [that] underpins the performance of leading players across sectors.”

The report goes on to say that there are macroeconomic headwinds category leaders must overcome to stay competitive, including roadblocks to economic growth, demographic shifts and changes in employee preferences that will intensify the talent competition, and high capital and labor costs, which are expected to continue unabated.

In this 60-minute panel, moderated by LatentView’s Sanjay Annadate, panelists discussed how they are approaching GenAI innovation despite these headwinds. For Andrew Phillips, embracing innovation comes as a response to the business’s most pressing priorities. His team at Apex Group leverages data about the company’s existing technology stack to decide which technology to invest in next. Even if it means forgoing being the first in their category to adopt new technology, if it doesn’t align with the business’s priorities, it is left on the cutting room floor. 

Adjusting to talent’s changing demands and the increasing need for new technology experts, Siggy Simon of Decathlon International notes that his organization navigates these roadblocks by creating Centers of Excellence and, in turn, an environment for innovators to test out new ideas and “fail fast”—a theme from the keynote earlier in the day. This flexibility to create without consequences allows the organization’s talent pool to avoid burnout, increasing employee retention and productivity.

Finally, the panelists all agree that technology investments are made only once buy-in has been achieved across the organization. To keep pace with changing technology, panelist Daniel Majewski shared that his organization, ZF Commercial Vehicle Services, regularly revises its technology roadmap as new tools emerge, primarily for leveraging autonomous and connected vehicle ecosystems.

Keeping pace with AI innovation does not mean upending all current technology plans and processes. Instead, it requires a commitment to defining the organization’s goal and identifying which solutions will help that goal come to fruition.

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