2015 Car Innovation: A comprehensive study on innovation in the automotive industry

This will be accompanied by structural changes in the auto industry’s R&D departments. OEMs will only slightly increase their R&D spending. While Western car manufacturers will cap their R&D investments, OEMs from China, India and South Korea will boost their spending on innovation.

Overall, the supplier sector and engineering service companies will be the winners of this development with additional R&D spending of EUR 20 billion in 2015 (in 2005: EUR 46 billion). The concentration process in the supplier industry will improve innovative strength and networking opportunities with other partners – another way of cutting costs while increasing the quality of innovations.

Oliver Wyman has analyzed the innovation strategies of the industry’s most successful auto companies. The study “Car Innovation 2015” identifies the levers that car manufacturers and suppliers must pull to become state-of-the-art innovation leaders.

Depending on the business design of the supplier and OEM, four dimensions must be brought into alignment: innovation proposition, competence focus and collaboration, innovation business case, and innovation organization and structure. The leading suppliers in innovation management generate a 16 percent higher EBIT margin than their peers – all by employing a clear innovation strategy and balance along those four dimensions.