Industry Trends 2024: Innovation Needs Competence

What are the major industry challenges?A global industry survey gives answers.Competitiveness is increasingly jeopardized by lack of competences.The effects of working in office versus remote work get tangible.The article provides insights and resolutions. At year-end 2023, we contacted industry experts on their challenges and resolutions.Lack of competence is the biggest challenge identified in our annual industry survey.The growing lack of competence is perceived across industries as both the major short-term as well as a mid-term challenge.Technology companies increasingly suffer from inadequate competences, both in terms of quantity and quality. COMPETENCE DRIVES COMPETITIVENESSTo get reliable industry insights, we have contacted 3,700 persons across different industries and regions worldwide.The survey was in online format and addressed to software and IT professionals, both managers and engineers.With a response rate of 6% covering different industry domains, the survey well represents different business models and regions in the world.From our parallel interviews with technology leaders, we dive deeper and investigate resolutions.Figure 1 shows the perception on upcoming challenges results across industries and regions.The horizontal axis shows short-term challenges, while the vertical axis shows mid-term obstacles.Each respondent was allowed to mention up to five challenges in both dimensions.The sum thus is more than 100%.