Fields of digital innovation in Europe - status quo & strategies

The omnipresent digitization changes economy and society alike. Even the various crises of the last few years did hardly slow down this development, but even accelerated digital transformation in many areas.

The Covid-19 pandemic has particularly shown the growing importance of digitization: companies with a highly digitized business model were the winners of the crisis, whereas late adopters have had to accelerate their digitization in a difficult economic environment.

Organizations are aware that they must become more resilient, more agile, more responsible, more sustainable, more customer- and employee-centric, and more efficient.

Scope and pace of digital transformation differs, but what is clear is that the future viability of entire industries depends, besides supportive framework conditions provided by politics and regulation, on smart investment behavior; organizations that miss a fundamental transformation run the risk of losing their competitiveness.

From a technological perspective, most organizations consider cloud platforms as major innovation hubs. But what is the actual importance of innovation areas such as cloud, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, quantum computing, virtual/augmented reality, etc.?

To get a clearer picture, T-Systems commissioned the market analysis and consulting firm PAC to conduct a telephone survey on the status quo, investment plans and attitudes regarding these driving forces behind innovation and digitization.

The survey was conducted in August and September 2022 among large European companies with more than 5,000 employees from various industry sectors, with headquarters in the DACH region (Germany, Switzerland, Austria), the Nordic region (Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway), the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain or France.

Interviewed roles were members of the general management board, IT decision makers, Chief Digital or Innovation Officers, line-of-business managers, or similar positions.

Since the focus of the study was on concrete areas of application, goals and challenges, only companies that already have corresponding technologies in use or are at least intensively involved with their use were surveyed.