SAN FRANCISCO and AMSTERDAM – September 6, 2023 – New survey findings from Miro®, the visual workspace for innovation, show there is near unanimous agreement among organization leaders and information workers that innovation is urgent and critical to business success (1). But because of economic uncertainty, fear, and outdated business practices, few are able to capitalize on the opportunity innovation offers.

Globally, nearly all leaders (98%) and information workers (90%) agreed that innovation – defined as the design, development, and launch of new products and services – is urgent. This was consistent across company size and industry, and the reason is clear: 79% of leaders and 76% of information workers said innovation is necessary to win against the competition. Without it, 82% of leaders said companies risk survival in the next five years. 

Despite wide agreement that innovation should be a priority, most (62%) said it falls by the wayside. Why is this? 

• Economic uncertainty: Over half (57%) of leaders said that innovation feels like a luxury and not a necessity in the current climate, and nearly half (47%) of information workers agreed. What’s more, over half (54%) of global leaders agreed that their companies should pause innovation until the economy is more stable, and over half (52%) said they aren’t willing to risk prioritizing  breakthrough innovations. Nevertheless, leaders point to competitors’ breakthrough innovations as the biggest threat to their business.

• Fear: A majority (62%) of leaders agreed fear gets in the way of pushing harder to innovate, and 58% said that their company is afraid to prioritize innovation. Fear is also deeply personal: Nearly one-third of leaders worry about derailing their careers or damaging their reputations if innovation projects go awry, while 52% of information workers said they worry their jobs are at risk if their companies fail to innovate. 

• Outdated technology and lack of cross-functional collaboration: Both leaders and information workers agreed that the biggest roadblocks on the path to innovation are technological challenges (like legacy tools) and organizational challenges, especially those related to cross-functional collaboration. Thirty-one percent of leaders cite technological hurdles, and 25% cite organizational hurdles. Similarly, 31% percent of information workers cite technological hurdles, and 30% cite organizational hurdles. 

“Innovation is an existential crisis for companies today – those that fail to meet the moment will soon be extinct,” said Paul D’Arcy, Miro’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Fortunately, in uncovering the obstacles that organizations encounter on their path to bringing new products and services to market, the data also offers insight into how to face these challenges. By prioritizing these solutions, companies can chart a course not just to survival, but to generational success.” 

How can companies overcome the innovation crisis? 

Survey findings show that organizations are not managing innovation at scale or on a breakthrough level. Miro believes that in order to overcome the innovation crisis, companies need to: 

• Be clear on strategy and communicate it throughout the organization

• Develop a diverse portfolio, including pursuing breakthrough bets with confidence

• Streamline cross-functional product development processes, optimizing for velocity and customer-centricity

• Address the core drivers of fear, and work to normalize failure and failing fast

“Work is becoming a multiplayer game. The more successful organizations are leaning into collaboration – within the organization and outside the organization – as a principal means of achieving more efficient and faster outcomes. This also applies to driving innovation,” said Wayne Kurtzman Research VP, Social, Communities and Collaboration at IDC. “When teams are organized to be creative, to take risks, and to push boundaries, we see more [teams] move from ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving.’ They create the opportunity to leapfrog ahead of their competitors and establish leadership in a space. Innovation fails when teams don’t have the right tools, processes or mindsets to collaborate. The companies who succeed will ultimately need to figure out how to instrument their business – from technology to culture – so that the balance tips in favor of reward versus risk.”

Miro’s mission is to empower teams to create the next BIG thing. The company has supported the innovation journey for its more than 180,000 customer organizations since pioneering the visual collaboration space in 2011. Today, 7 out of the 10 most innovative companies (2) use Miro to increase the speed and impact of innovation within their organizations. 

“From the beginning, we designed Miro to help speed innovation by improving the ways teams ideate, collaborate, and manage projects. Based on feedback from the product and service development teams who use Miro everyday, we’ve pushed far beyond the boundaries of a typical online whiteboard, building a shared workspace for innovation that delivers meaningful impact across strategy and planning, customer-centric product design, and iterative product development,” said Varun Parmar, Miro’s Chief Operating Officer. “In fact, 81% of our enterprise customers report that Miro helped them finish projects faster, and 85% indicated that Miro improved the overall quality of their work.” 

Miro has become the standard for collaborative innovation by delivering an enterprise-grade platform with core capabilities purpose-built for teams that bring new products and services to market every day. It starts with six bundles of capabilities built for all stages of the innovation journey – all in one tool. These include:

• Product Development and Workflows

• Diagramming and Process Mapping

• Workshops & Asynchronous Collaboration

• Miro AI

• Content & Data Visualization

• Visual Project Management

The six bundles are combined with an open and flexible platform designed to enable enterprises to adapt Miro to their specific needs through integrations, applications, templates, etc., and it’s all supported by a secure and compliant enterprise foundation designed to help keep data protected and enable Miro to be easily managed across the organization.  

Read more about Miro’s study on organization innovation here. 

About Miro 

Miro is an online workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to build the next big thing. The platform's infinite canvas enables teams to lead engaging workshops and meetings, design products, brainstorm ideas, and more. Miro, co-headquartered in San Francisco and Amsterdam, serves more than 60M users worldwide, including 99% of the Fortune 100. Miro was founded in 2011 and currently has more than 1,800 employees in 12 hubs around the world. To learn more, please visit https://miro.com.

Contact: press@miro.com 

(1) Miro conducted an online CAWI survey in July 2023 surveying 1,792 leaders – including heads, VPs, and C-level executives – and 8,261 full-time information workers in product, design, engineering, UX, project management, and other roles involved in product development workflows at enterprises. These leaders and information workers represent seven global markets – Australia, Germany, France, Japan, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

(2) 2023 BCG Most Innovative Companies in the World, Boston Consulting Group