Mastercard and Harvard Business Review Analytic
Services Research identifies insights, methods, risks in remote
collaboration, enhanced security and customer experiences
The increased demand for digital-first solutions and more
customized experiences over the past year has led companies to
place a greater emphasis on innovation. In the second edition of
the Become Index, 53% of executives say their organizations
place a high priority on innovation. Close to half of businesses
surveyed (42%) responded to the need by increasing innovation
budgets. They developed new ways to keep workers safe and novel
paths to connect with and cater to customers while safeguarding
customers’ health and peace of mind.
Become, sponsored by Mastercard and powered by the Harvard
Business Review Analytic Services Business Innovators Index, is an
annual, long-term innovation research initiative. It provides the
actionable insights and roadmap needed to spark innovation, all
informed by the extensive research and diverse input from consumers
and key innovative businesses around the globe.
In its second edition, Become surveyed more than 1,800 business
leaders and more than 10,000 consumers around the world and across
industries to identify the traits demonstrated by the most
innovative companies:
- Digital Agility: Keeping up with
accelerated digital adoption and real-time customer needs,
especially touchless experiences
- Surround-Sound Analytics: Making
data-driven decisions the lifeblood of the organization
- Ironclad Data Security: Protecting
customers and their data
- Strategic Investing: Taking
intentional risks and accepting failure as part of the process
- Customer Proximity: Keeping
customers close as a guiding force for innovation
Alex Clemente, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services
(HBR-AS) managing director says, “As the world continues to
emerge from the pandemic’s long shadow, the pace and speed of
innovation has brought on new opportunities, but also some
challenges. Many organizations have proven they can be fast, agile,
and emerge stronger to whatever awaits next, but there are some
gaps in what businesses saw important and what consumers need
during and after the pandemic. I believe business and society are
now forced to redefine what it means to be innovative. And
businesses everywhere should re-evaluate if the new-found velocity
and pace of change can be sustained.”
If companies are to excel into the future, addressing today’s
risks and consumer demands include focusing on five key areas:
- Build back with humanity. Research finds that 71%
of consumers say they are more likely to buy from brands that
reflect their values and provide excellent care for their customers
and employees.
- Break barriers to remote collaboration – More than
one-third (38%) of executives cite working remotely
as a challenge to future innovation and growth. A distributed set
of teams not only presents barriers to collaboration—especially the
informal teamwork that can blossom amid casual encounters—but also
can keep people removed from tools and facilities that support
innovation.
- Prioritize innovation investments. Despite the gains
made in vaccines and therapeutics, one of the most common
challenges to innovation is an uncertain economic outlook and
potential loss of revenue. More than half of respondents
(63%) cite uncertain economic outlook and nearly half
(46%) cite revenue loss as challenges to innovation, thus
making it harder to decide which innovation efforts to pursue and
which to table.
- Prevent a security and data privacy pandemic. It’s no
doubt that trust and peace of mind are highly important, ranking
third on the priority list behind health and safety, and
convenience. Yet only 37% of organizations indicated they
have recently or plan to soon invest in data privacy and
cybersecurity management to improve the customer experience.
Similarly, only 35% of survey respondents say recent
investments in data privacy and security were made in response to
the pandemic.
- Personalize customer proximity.More than a third
(36%) of consumers are willing to share more personal
information if it means a more immediate, personalized customer
service experience. Being close to and truly understanding the
customer’s needs can be supported through investments in
predictive, data-driven, and real-time digital tools.
Michael Miebach, CEO at Mastercard says, “This report
shows that people are demanding real action. The world has changed
from the pandemic, and people have less patience for just talk. As
we’ve seen in these findings, many businesses aren’t meeting that
expectation and so will need to work harder to do so.”
Notes to Editors:
Methodology
Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Business Innovators
Index study was conducted during September and October of 2020. A
total of 1,846 respondents, drawn from the HBR global audience of
readers (magazine/newsletter readers, customers, HBR.org users),
completed the business survey. A separate survey was conducted
among consumers aged 18+. A total of 10,755 respondents, drawn from
a global consumer research panel, completed the consumer survey.
Both studies garnered responses from all major regions of the
world.
Research Reports
To download the full Become 2021 reports: The Value of
Experience: Customer Needs Top the Innovation Agenda and The CEO
Story: Innovating from Crisis to Recovery, please visit
BecomeIndex.com or HBR.org.
View the first episode of a new thought leadership series –
Mastercard Conversations. Hear more about the report and other
topics in the first episode which includes CEO interviews with
Mastercard, IBM and Synchrony.
What CEOs Are Saying
Mastercard and Harvard Business Review Analytic Services
developed The CEO Story: Innovating from
Crisis to Recovery, a look at the actions that can spark
change and innovation as companies and people look ahead to what’s
next.
Michael Schlein, President and CEO, Accion says: “A vital
ingredient of an organization’s digital agility is experimentation.
Many organizations pour excessive time and investment into
designing new digital products, only to realize they don’t function
as expected when factoring in client behavior. To develop new
offerings in a digital world, financial service providers need the
flexibility to experiment safely and effectively. This means teams
need the freedom to fail, all while ensuring that any inevitable
failures occur in a secure environment. Testing assumptions can
open surprising doors that create differentiated offerings and
innovative solutions.”
Nick Molnar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Afterpay Ltd. says:
“When the global economy started to shut down our stock dropped 90%
in three days. We had massive headwinds in front of us. It’s an
easy instinct to hoard cash when times get tough, but it’s also
important to be brave and invest. And it turned out that our
service was and is just what consumers need right now—the ability
to spend in a responsible way by paying for things with their own
money over time. Covid has given us the tailwinds to accelerate
investment in our business and double-down on our strategy,
including global expansion and expansion into new verticals.”
Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM says: “If there is
anything the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us, it’s the critical
importance of technology solutions that enable speed, flexibility,
insight, and innovation for our clients. For organizations today,
choosing which technology platforms power their business is the
most consequential decision they can make. These platforms are the
basis for competitive advantage in the 21st century. They determine
how quickly companies can pivot to new market opportunities, how
well they serve clients, how much they can scale, and how fast they
can respond to a crisis like the one we’re facing today.”
Arne Sorenson, President and CEO, Marriott International,
Inc. (2012-2021) said: “We maintain a constant conversation
with our customers, both through formal surveys and in meetings
with meeting planners and corporate travel managers. With Marriott
Bonvoy, our loyalty program, we’ve got access to 140 million plus
travelers. We don’t necessarily communicate with every one of them,
of course, but we’ve got the ability, with real time feedback, to
hear from every one of them about what they want and what they
liked and didn’t like about their last stay with us. In 2020, in
combination with hearing from our general managers on the front
lines, that led us to very quickly roll out new protocols around
health and safety.”
Dr. Ruth Browne, President and CEO, Ronald McDonald House New
York says: “Very early in the pandemic we were fighting just to
keep our doors open. We had our first Covid case in early March.
But I thought it was important that we keep fighting for our
future, too. We had just launched our strategic planning process in
January, and we elected to continue on with it. As I like to tell
my team, ‘You either make dinner or are dinner.’ I want to make
dinner. Our plan is a growth plan—a plan to expand the depth,
breadth, and reach of our services, become better aligned with our
hospital partners, and create new and recurring streams of revenue
for our house. When you believe in your future, it’s important to
always keep fighting for it.”
Katrina Lake, Founder and CEO, Stitch Fix Inc. says:
“Listening to the client and his or her context has always been at
the core of our experience and that is even more relevant today
than before. Even before the major disruption of the pandemic, our
stylists were very accustomed to seeing our clients going through
changes—switching jobs, moving to another part of the country, or
growing their family—and we are able to meet the client in that
moment. Having this ability to listen and react quickly is
something we’ve been doing for a decade and has been enormously
helpful, especially in 2020 and into this year, in delivering an
experience curated for each individual and right for the context of
their lives, even when that context is rapidly changing.”
Margaret Keane, Executive Chair, Synchrony says: “We’ve
had to have the right infrastructure to be agile and compete in
real time. In the past, it might have taken us a year to roll out a
new credit model. Today, we’re able to make changes to our models
on the fly because we’ve created the technology infrastructure,
leveraging data and artificial intelligence, that allows us to do
that. During the 2008 credit crisis, we closed a higher volume of
accounts because we didn’t really have the ability to know, in real
time, how creditworthy a customer was when economic conditions
changed quickly. Today, we’re much more surgical and fast, all
driven by an infrastructure that allows us to do things in real
time.”
Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, President, University of Maryland,
Baltimore County (UMBC) says: “We’ve taken paying attention to
the needs of our students to a new level. We are acutely aware that
it’s much easier for students to fall through the cracks since
we’re not with them in-person each day. It has meant being even
more proactive about finding those students who might not be
connecting effectively or who are having problems. We spend a lot
of time talking about having the courage to listen to the voices of
students—not just student leaders, but also those who might be
feeling invisible.”
About Mastercard (NYSE:MA):
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments
industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital
economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions
safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks,
partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help
individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses
realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ,
drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our
company. With connections across more than 210 countries and
territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks
priceless possibilities for all.
www.mastercard.com
About Harvard Business Review Analytic Services:
Harvard Business Review Analytic Services is an independent
commercial research unit within Harvard Business Review Group,
conducting research and comparative analysis on important
management challenges and emerging business opportunities. Seeking
to provide business intelligence and peer-group insight, each
report is published based on the findings of original quantitative
and/or qualitative research and analysis. Quantitative surveys are
conducted with the HBR Advisory Council, HBR’s global research
panel, and qualitative research is conducted with senior business
executives and subject matter experts from within and beyond the
Harvard Business Review author community. Email us at
hbranalyticservices@hbr.org.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210330005416/en/
Media: Katie Priebe, Global Communications, Mastercard +1
(914) 707-9822 | Katie.Priebe@mastercard.com
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