2017年-德勤全球_Innovation_in_Mining_series_36页_1mb

Summary of "Innovation in Mining: Latin America 2017"

Core Content

This report, Innovation in Mining: Latin America 2017, is part of a series of studies by Deloitte to understand how mining companies are innovating globally. It focuses on the current state and future direction of innovation in the Latin American mining sector, highlighting the need for systemic change and long-term strategic transformation.

Main Points

• Innovation is critical for transformation: The mining industry is at a tipping point, with a growing recognition that innovation is essential for improving productivity, reducing costs, and addressing complex challenges such as environmental and social concerns.
• Current focus on Core innovation: Latin American mining companies predominantly concentrate on Core-level innovation, which involves optimizing existing assets, products, and services. However, there is a clear aspiration to increase investment in Adjacent and Transformational innovation.
• Innovation maturity is improving: Despite the challenges, mining companies in Latin America are becoming more mature in their innovation efforts, showing a greater understanding of how innovation can drive long-term value.
• Need for broader innovation strategies: Companies need to move beyond incremental improvements and adopt a more comprehensive approach to innovation that includes different types and ambition levels, such as Transformational innovation, which offers the highest return but is often underinvested.
• Challenges in innovation adoption: Many Latin American mining firms lack a clear innovation strategy, organizational culture, and incentives to drive innovation effectively. This results in a gap between the perceived importance of innovation and its actual effectiveness.
• Key innovation drivers: The top five innovation drivers in Latin America include reducing costs to operate, reducing risk, safety, improving asset productivity, and improving sustainability/reducing environmental footprint.

Key Findings

• Innovation distribution: As of 2017, the current innovation investment distribution in Latin America is 65% Core, 21% Adjacent, and 14% Transformational. The target distribution is 49% Core, 28% Adjacent, and 23% Transformational.
• Focus on Product Performance: Product Performance is identified as the most critical type of innovation for competitiveness in Latin America, followed by Process and Product System.
• Stakeholder Engagement: While not the top priority, Stakeholder/Customer Engagement ranks higher in Latin America than globally, likely due to the region's complex stakeholder environment and social license pressures.
• Importance vs. Effectiveness: Perceived effectiveness of innovation lags behind its importance across most drivers, indicating a need for stronger innovation capabilities and strategic focus.

Innovation Ambition Levels

Doblin outlines three ambition levels of innovation:

• Core innovations: Optimizing existing assets, products, and services.
• Adjacent innovations: Expanding into "new to the company" business areas.
• Transformational innovations: Breakthroughs and inventions that are new to the industry or the world.

The expected returns on innovation investment are in reverse order: 70% from Transformational, 20% from Adjacent, and 10% from Core.

Innovation Building Blocks and Capability Levers

To foster innovation, companies need to focus on four building blocks:

1. Approach: Clear innovation strategies and methodologies.
2. Organization: Structured innovation competency within the company.
3. Resources and Competencies: Talent, skills, tools, and funding.
4. Metrics and Incentives: Targets and rewards to guide innovation performance.

These building blocks are supported by 12 capability levers, including innovation strategy, pipeline management, process development, and external collaboration.

Innovation in Action

• Vale's S11D Complex: A major project in Brazil that reduces environmental impact through technological innovations such as mobile excavators and water-efficient processing.
• Antamina's Drones: Custom drones developed in collaboration with a Peruvian start-up to improve equipment maintenance and reduce downtime.
• Gerdua's Recycling Project: A sustainability initiative that supports local waste pickers and improves environmental performance.

Strategic Recommendations

• Shift from short-term to long-term innovation: Companies should move beyond short-term operational improvements and focus on strategic, sustainable innovation.
• Enhance innovation culture and collaboration: Innovation must be embedded in the organization's culture and supported by cross-functional teams and external partnerships.
• Invest in Transformational innovation: While risky, Transformational innovation offers the highest return and is crucial for long-term competitiveness.
• Improve metrics and incentives: Companies need to develop clear metrics and incentives to measure and drive innovation performance.

Conclusion

The report underscores the importance of innovation in the Latin American mining sector as a means to achieve long-term transformation and sustainability. It highlights the need for companies to move beyond current operational improvements and adopt a more strategic, collaborative, and comprehensive approach to innovation.