If the COVID-19 pandemic made one thing abundantly clear, it was that innovation and transformation must go hand in hand to be effective. But as companies flock to innovative technologies like hybrid cloud, data analytics, AI and automation, many digital transformations today still happen in silos, without the sustained support and processes needed to reach their full potential.

Silos are the enemy of innovation success. Lasting, effective digital transformation comes from not only adopting technology, but also adjusting people, processes and culture to support it. Organizations need to be able to innovate like startups—even large enterprises that are grappling with waterfall processes and traditional, potentially outdated technologies.

So, how can you ensure your organization’s digital transformation goes beyond technology investments and becomes a part of your company’s culture?

IBM Garage exists for this very reason, with unique methodology that unites design thinking with the speed of agile and DevOps. IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ study to evaluate innovation and transformation processes at 461 organizations to explore the potential return on investment of collaborating with IBM Garage.

According to the study, organizations that invest in IBM Garage are poised to realize exponential benefits:

• 10x more innovative ideas generated
• 67% faster speed to outcomes
• 6x more innovations released to market

Learn how you can get the most out of your business transformation and technology investments.

1. Supercharge idea generation and testing

Design thinking is used to identify an organization’s needs and come up with ideas to improve products and customer experiences. Putting human-centric design at the forefront is an effective way to simplify problems, reduce organizational complexity and align goals and vision across teams

Whether you want to optimize employee experiences, automate business processes, improve customer and ecosystem relationships, or all of the above, design thinking is a powerful technique to help you get there.

The study found that organizations using IBM Garage to co-create with customers and cross-functional employees significantly increased their ability to generate and test new ideas. Instead of testing one idea per three proposed, their teams identified 33 ideas per one selected for testing. With an increased capacity for ideation—10x more ideas generated on average—these organizations were then able to test 3x more innovation ideas and deliver value from otherwise untapped opportunities.

2. Increase innovation ideas released into production and boost ROI

Building on the increase in ideas generated and tested, organizations working with IBM Garage also doubled the number of tested innovation ideas that they released to production. And, because of the aligned co-creation and increased idea generation, the ideas selected were at least twice as likely to meet real business needs. This improved relevancy and quality of innovation ideas maps directly to improvements in cash flow, cost savings and revenue—including an average ROI of 102%.

3. Accelerate delivery timelines and reduce time to market

Faster ideation, faster testing—you’re probably seeing the snowball effect here. Another finding of the study was that the early-stage, cross-functional alignment and end-user input combined with rigorous agile workflows of IBM Garage helped teams get from idea to release 3x faster—slashing a staggering 67% off project delivery timelines. Even during a pandemic, delivery teams were able to continue operating virtually to quickly discover, test, and deploy services and get 6x more innovative projects released to market in order to meet new business demands.

Read the full report to learn more about how innovation processes and culture are evolving.