IDC's Future of Digital Innovation Predictions

Delivering innovative digital products can help businesses satisfy customers and create competitive differentiation. That’s a good first step. But, organizations that can take their software innovation to the next level – creating value engines – will spawn additional business value, such as data monetization, new partnerships, and entry into new markets.

Profitable digital innovation starts with software, but it doesn’t end there. It requires thoughtful alignment across business, development, and IT stakeholders and a strategic selection and application of proprietary or community source tools. Most of all, however, digital innovation requires a laser focus on what customers want and will want, even before they know they want it.

As business leaders consider ways to leverage software innovation and transform their businesses into digital innovation factories, IDC offers its top 10 predictions for the Future of Digital Innovation, which address topics related to shifting business requirements and enabling more efficient software development:

IDC’s Future of Digital Innovation Top 10 Predictions

Prediction 1: By 2026, enterprises that successfully generate digital innovation will derive over 25% of revenue from digital products, services and/or experiences.
Prediction 2: By 2022, organizations that allocate 50%+ of their software development projects to customer facing initiatives will see revenue grow 15% faster compared to those that focus more on internal projects.
Prediction 3: To help alleviate the developer skills shortage, 55% of organizations will use cloud marketplaces and tech startup acquisitions as their most important approaches to software sourcing by 2024.
Prediction 4: By 2024, companies that have already invested in building a developer ecosystem will expand their customer base by 25%.
Prediction 5: Securing the software supply chain will be a core competency embraced by 75% of large digital innovators by 2023.
Prediction 6: By 2023 traditional distribution models crumble as 20% of businesses in some sectors use technology to go direct to customers, seeking to improve customer satisfaction and product development.
Prediction 7: By 2026, 30% of software development teams will be focused on turning traditional products into outcomes as a service.
Prediction 8: Half the Global 500 will have insourced software development significantly by 2025, exacerbating the software engineering skills shortage and fueling interest in software development efficiencies.
Prediction 9: By 2024, 55% of successful digitally innovative products will be built by teams that include people with creative, critical thinking, analysis and automation skills, as well as software engineers.
Prediction 10: By 2025, 75% of newly developed applications will include some automatically generated code, freeing up humans to focus on development tasks that are not easily automated.