Lisa Caldwell, EY Americas Business Consulting Managing Partner, joins Cheddar News to discuss the hottest areas for innovation, and what major decision-makers are doing differently when it comes to innovation.

Opening Bell

These are the Three Hottest Areas for Innovation

This next segment is brought to you by E. Y. Empowering today's leaders to realize tomorrow's opportunities. The pandemic accelerated innovations and technology in so many ways and across just about every industry and business leaders and decision makers can all benefit from embracing innovation to seek all new opportunities, joining us now with more on this ELISA caldwell. Ey Americas, business consulting, managing partner, good to have you on the show lisa what do you think is going to be the next big innovation and how will it impact across industries? So thanks for having me asia. So we have seen a decade worth of transformation in just the last two years and what's been key is leveraging emerging technology to really move away from traditional formulas of success. Two things that really help us respond very rapidly to both opportunities and threats. So technologies like analytics, ai, Blockchain, cyber and even web three dot oh all those technologies are here today. And the real question is, what can your company b by leveraging these capabilities If we did a little bit more into a. I it's kind of an interesting dialogue, you know, voice recognition, neural networks, cognitive systems have been talked about since the 80s but we didn't really have the computing power or the cost of storage to allow us to really solve business problems In the last five years. We've seen a huge increase in the interest and investment in technologies like Ai and in a recent ey research survey, 93% of organization said that they are or plan to invest significantly in the technology. Why now because the cost of processing and storage has gone down enough that these tools can help us solve real world business problems and not just things like productivity or efficiency but maybe most importantly creating new experiences. Wow. As you say, new experiences. I think about all of the different areas we could go within technology moving away from the traditional some of the buzzwords I picked on with you were Web three and also artificial intelligence. Where else do you think there are major opportunities for innovation? So when we think about innovation we think about people processes technologies and data and I think the biggest opportunity right now is in and around data. The algorithms for a lot of these technologies haven't changed. What's interesting is our access to data sets and readily available unstructured data. Ey has created a document intelligence platform that helps our clients to digitize, suggest, confirm and actually extract insights from unstructured data and so it helps in saving time and reviewing material but maybe more importantly, faster path to insights, higher quality decision making and really lowering overall enterprise risk for an organization. So data and data sets are key to what technology can do in the future? Yeah, it sounds like data is kind of the crucial part when it comes to efficiency for businesses. So what are the big leaders and decision makers doing differently when it comes to innovation in these arenas? So they're looking at business led tech enabled change with people at the center. And the reason I focus on people at the center is that disruptions are really what's driving a lot of the innovation today. And in order to address disruptions, you really need to have diverse perspectives and diverse skill sets. And so we're not just talking about gender or race, but we're talking about geographic representation, different levels of education, age representation. Just honestly a different way of thinking and thinking differently. Really helps to drive innovation. Organizations that are helping their employees think and work differently. Are those that are going to be the leaders And and we view that through the lens of how organizations are developing their people, developing more adaptive skills as opposed to just technical skills. And so what I mean by adaptive skills is helping workers to be able to take advantage of this technology through collaboration, different types of problem solving and continuous learning. In 2016, Ey opened our neuro diversity centre of expertise and we've hired over 100 and 50 neurodivergent colleagues that are helping serve our clients by doing exactly this. Collaborating on analytics, collaborating on a I that's driving different kinds of outcomes, diversity is the key to innovation. Interesting to hear how you're prioritizing prioritizing diversity and inclusion when it comes to innovation and also this idea of people really at the center of these moves. What do you think is one of the biggest things organizations get wrong when approaching innovation. I think some organizations still view innovation as silver bullets, they're looking for the one big hot idea that's going to drive growth and what we've learned is that innovation is a process, it's a collaborative process And our research shows that 85% of executives agree that it actually takes an ecosystem to really drive innovation. So last year, Ey teamed with Nottingham's burke to actually open an innovation hub in Cleveland, we have five of our ecosystem partners working with us where we've actually been able to create a real world production environment. Our clients can then come and actually visualize and experience the processes required to create innovation and I I know you mentioned kind of the hottest, newest thing being the silver bullet as one of the downfalls when it comes to innovation right now. So I'll say where are the three biggest growth areas that you would pinpoint for innovation right now? You already mentioned data. Yeah, I think I'll focus on industries. Um, and just quickly there there there are, I think healthcare, um where we've seen unprecedented pressures and I think this concept of the continuum of care will be critical going from physical to virtual to in home care to drive different and, and and and more importantly ideal outcomes for patients. I think the second places in manufacturing and I think that all of us have experienced through the pandemic, what can happen when we have some volatility in labor and materials and transportation and so supply chain visibility and resiliency. I think this concept of digital control towers to actually create a trusted ecosystem for for supply will be the future. And then third I would say retail, I think that whether we're going from groceries and toilet paper or the latest fashion, I think that the metaverse creates a bridge between the physical and the virtual. And I think what we'll ultimately see is that purchasing decisions may no longer be made based on the features and functions of a product but will actually be made based on customer experience. So cool to get this glimpse of the future. That's lisa caldwell. Ey Americas business consulting, managing partner, thanks so much for joining us. And this segment was brought to you by Ey helping you realize your transformation through the power of people, technology and innovation visit Ey dot com to learn more