SMEs driving innovation in Nigeria, reveals GE report

General Electric Nigeria has presented its 2014 annual Innovation Barometer report for Nigeria, with 39 percent of those polled placing small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) at the forefront of innovation.

The event, which held at the the Intercontinental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, was attended by a distinguished and select audience comprising chief executives of companies and senior-level managers.

Now an annual fixture on GE’s calendar, the report is distilled from a wide-ranging opinion survey of senior business executives, all actively engaged in the management of their firm’s innovation strategy. It is carried out on behalf of GE by Edelman Berland in 26 countries, including Nigeria. This year’s report is the second for Nigeria.

“At GE, we are all about innovation, which makes us very delighted to be presenting a report that measures the innovation health of Nigerian businesses,” Lazarus Angbazo, president and CEO for GE Nigeria, said on this year’s report.

To produce the report, the survey examined every country’s uniquely-developed framework for innovation, profiles the most efficient policies to support innovation, and adopts a firm-centric approach to understand the way businesses adapt their innovation practices and strategies in a challenging economic environment.

As with past editions, this year’s report offers interesting insights and amazing perspectives on the trajectory of innovation currently playing out in the Nigerian corporate ecosystem, with majority of those polled agreeing that innovation is a key driver of business growth and development.

One interesting insight, according to the report, is that 39 percent of those polled placed SMEs at the forefront of innovation, while 82 percent saw innovation as a positive force that has improved the quality of living in Nigeria at a scale only imagined 10 years ago.

The report also noted that some segments of the Nigerian economy, such as high tech, telecom and energy industries, have embraced innovation faster than the others, particularly the manufacturing and healthcare industries.

Majority of respondents described innovation as a global phenomenon that will grow and continue to deliver impressive dividends through the merging and combining of talents, ideas, insights and resources across the world. They also agreed that the framework for innovation has slightly improved in Nigeria compared with the situation 18 months ago.