Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
3.7 ICT and Innovation
The capability for innovation is very important for European footwear companies in
order to face global competition and to keep their position in higher market segments,
which rely on differentiation and quality. This can only be achieved by a large-scale
deployment of leading-edge research results, a highly efficient process organisation and
chain management, and a highly qualified work-force. It is largely recognised that both
product and process innovation (e.g. automation, flexible re-organisation) are key
instruments to support this strategy. In contrast, product segments which are dominated
by mass production and do not require a high level of know-how and innovation will
continue to be moved to countries with lower wages.
This competitive scenario pushes companies towards using technologies to innovate
products, to enhance quality and broaden applicability of materials. Process innovation
is centred on production processes, such as automated and computer-based
manufacturing systems, which can combine the low costs of mass production with
product differentiation. In this context, e-Business W@tch asked companies in its 2006
survey whether they had launched any new or substantially improved products or
services during the 12 months prior to the interview, and if they had introduced new or
significantly improved internal processes in the same period of time. Companies that
indicated that they have introduced innovations were then asked about the role of ICT in
their innovation activity.
According to the survey results, 38% of footwear enterprises said that they had launched
new (or improved) products in the previous year. These companies indicated that about a
quarter of these product innovations had been directly related to or enabled by ICT (see
Exhibit 3-30). Thus, the incidence of product innovation in the footwear industry is
higher than on average in the ten sectors studied this year by the e-Business W@tch, but
the role of ICT is less pronounced. This does not come as a surprise since it is easy to
understand that ICT is more important for developing new products in ICT-related
industries or service-oriented sectors than in manufacturing industries like footwear.
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