“Deloitte delivers finance excellence consulting through the Finance division of its Strategy & Operations practice, supplemented by contributions from its Finance Advisory, Technology, and Tax practices.” “The point for Deloitte is to get away from the prevailing view that focuses operations on transactional activities and instead design them to serve the business.”

Specifically, for Deloitte, ALM highlights, “Deloitte is armed with a dedicated finance analytics offering and takes the position that yesterday’s efficiency plays can form the foundation for today’s innovative capabilities. The firm is particularly adept at helping clients adapt technology and shared services and outsourcing into operating models that deliver the sort of planning and analysis critical for finance to fulfil its business partnering ambitions.”

DISRUPTION in the retail power sector isn’t anything new, but its pace and consequences appear to be increasing. Nonetheless, many retail power providers are not responding to the existential threats with the urgency one might expect. While the call to innovate faster and more effectively is getting louder by the minute, Deloitte’s experience with retail power providers around the world suggests that the vast majority of innovation is still focused on core operations. In other words, it’s generally about making established products and services better, rather than expanding from existing business into “new-to-the-company” business or inventing brand-new products or services for markets that don’t exist yet.

Doblin’s Innovation Ambition Matrix (figure 1) provides a framework for understanding where a company stands in terms of its commitment to innovation. Within the matrix, innovation can occupy one of three “ambition levels,” which define its purpose or result: Core innovations optimize existing products for existing customers Adjacent or incremental innovations expand existing business into new-to-the-company business Transformational or new innovations are breakthroughs and inventions for markets that don’t yet exist.

Doblin research suggests that the most successful innovators manage their innovation efforts and investments as a portfolio of activities that is balanced across the three ambition levels.2 Until recently, this research found that companies with well-balanced innovation portfolios spent an average of 70 percent of their investments on innovation at the Core level, 20 percent at the Adjacent level, and 10 percent at the Transformational level.3 In their 2018 book Detonate: Why and How Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner’s mind) to Survive, authors Geoff Tuff, a senior leader in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Innovation and Applied Design practices, and Steven Goldbach, chief strategy officer for Deloitte LLP, contend this “golden ratio” has shifted even further away from the Core level (i.e., optimizing existing products for existing customers).4 In a world where disruption can upend entire sectors, the authors maintain the ideal investment ratio has likely shifted to 50 percent Core, 30 percent Adjacent, and 20 percent Transformational.