As the largest economy and key influencer in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia plays an integral role in establishing a positive benchmark for innovation that other nations can learn from. To seize new opportunities that are emerging every day and thereby accelerate economic transformation, businesses and industries in Saudi Arabia need to enhance their competitiveness — and to do so, they must leverage data and the cloud to their advantage. The wide-ranging impacts of COVID-19 that include massive disruption to legacy business practices, the economy, and society at large, confirm the value of embracing innovation in navigating this “never normal” phase.

Our newest industry and country-specific report titled “Winning in an Era of Disruption and Diversification, Accenture Innovation Maturity Index, Saudi Arabia, 2020,” found that a select group of companies in Saudi Arabia is outperforming their peers through innovation-focused initiatives that embrace cloud computing to unlock value and advance business objectives. Some of these initiatives include shaping new market strategies, reaching new customers, and expanding the value of their current customer base.

Accenture refers to companies that excel in embracing innovation in their operations as “Innovation Champions” — these companies have outperformed others in terms of revenue and profitability growth in the last five years and are expected to do so over the next five years. They unlock trapped value better than their counterparts by using data, digital technologies, and new ways of working, including the cloud, to execute what Accenture refers to as “wise pivots” — building new digital-based businesses while continuing to grow and transform their core operations.

Our research also shows that “Innovation Champions” are nearly 75 percent more likely than non-champions to believe that migrating their technology infrastructure to the cloud is necessary to transform their business. Accenture’s research also found that nearly three quarters (73 percent) of Saudi companies concede that they are not prepared for disruption. Even more (76 percent) expect their industry to be disrupted by new innovations in the next three years — particularly from new competitors and new technologies.

To address this concern, we identified several actions that companies can take to target and release value trapped within their businesses. These include:

• Test and embrace multiple innovation practices to redefine the conventional ways of doing business (For example, rotation of talent from business-as-usual roles to “innovation gigs”).

• Prioritize investments in capabilities that you can bring back into your “core” to help modernize existing ways of working (For example, acquisition of artificial intelligence or cybersecurity capabilities).

• Tie innovation investments to short-term efficiency benefits and the desired long-term performance (i.e., revenue and profit growth).

• Direct investments to innovations that can help expand your footprint into new markets.

• Reorganize for disruptive innovation initiatives and go beyond experiments to turn initiatives with the highest disruption potential into new businesses.

— The writer is managing director, strategy and consulting lead for Accenture in the Middle East.