Xavier Anglada, the Managing Director at Accenture Digital and Innovation Lead in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, believes that companies have no other option but to innovate.

“Innovation is not about waking up and thinking a great idea. It’s a very streamlined process of things you need to do to bring ideas that come from within the organization and from outside. All these things require a disproportionate focus on this agenda,” Anglada said.

He believes that the process-based “innovation architecture” can be crucial for companies’ success, as realized by the company’s own application of the methodology.

While big data and digital are frequently discussed topics, the process of digital transformation is a “journey” that not many are familiar with. There might be an understanding of the need for digital transformation in the region; however, the problem still exists with large corporations who do not mine the data to create new services, according to Anglada.

As part of his work, Anglada fills the gap between large corporations, often comfortable in their stature and start-ups. He views start-ups as more agile in their business models to digitally transform the industry.

In a recent survey conducted by the company, Innovation Maturity Index, only 7 percent of the corporates were found to be ahead of the rest. The study assessed around 200 of the largest corporations across all industries in the region.

“Instead of investing in the same, you invest to innovate on similar products or even in different products in the ecosystem, it’s about repurposing,” he added.

Investment is often an issue encountered while innovating. To eliminate this concern, Anglada suggests repurposing the additional money of cost savings through automation of the processes.

In a bid to assist companies in their transformation, Accenture brings start-ups into the core of large companies to create a new opportunity through innovation. Unlike the “traditional” mind-set of established corporations, Anglada views start-ups as more agile and risk-prone to make sure that they improve.

With over 400,000 start-ups in Accenture’s database that can assist in addressing certain issues in the industry, they have created an innovation factory model which brings people, processes, academia, start-ups, and ventures to support large corporations to transform digitally.