Swiss boards of directors for optimized innovation
swissVR, together with Deloitte and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, surveyed 460 board members on business prospects and current board topics such as strategies and innovation. In the first "swissVR Monitor" issue, board members were quite positive about the business outlook for the next twelve months.
Board members' outlook for their own company: 53% expect a positive business development for their company - with companies being assessed much more optimistically than the economic development as a whole. Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Wunderlin, President swissVR, says: "The discrepancy between the assessment of the outlook for one's own company and that of the industry indicates how great the confidence is in one's own efforts to master current challenges and in the success of one's own company."
Top strategic topics of the BoD
96 percent of the Swiss board members surveyed confirm that they currently play an active role in defining corporate strategy - and thus comply with the legal mandate. The majority of respondents have a positive view of the competence of the boards of directors in strategic matters. However, 30 percent believe that individual members may be out of their depth when it comes to strategic issues.
The proportion of SMEs is much higher than that of large companies.
Optimizations and strategies
Board members have to deal with a wide range of topics and set priorities. According to the survey, the most important topics in the last twelve months were efficiency enhancement and optimization of internal processes (43%), development of a corporate strategy (36%), and personnel challenges at management level (35%).
For the next year, the respondents expect a comparably high importance only for the efficiency topic. On the other hand, digitization, market and sales strategy, and talent management will gain in importance in the future.
Swiss innovation focus
The majority of the innovation focus is on service and product innovations (58% and 47% respectively). Swiss companies already seem to be following the global trend toward a service society with its strong focus on the development of new services. However, the traditional focus of many Swiss companies - the new development and improvement of products - continues to enjoy a high priority.
The fact that many board members also consider process and business model innovation to be important (30% and 22% respectively) is an indication that Swiss companies are already increasingly innovating beyond the product and are driving innovation in other parts of the value chain (including services, processes, marketing). Furthermore, a large majority (86%) of the surveyed BoD members emphasize that suitable employees and the right know-how are absolute priorities in order to pursue successful innovation activities. (Source: "swissVR Monitor")
More information can be found Swiss Centre for Corporate Governance
