There’s no denying the amazing global success that companies in the Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) region have been enjoying for several years. If you ask SAP’s Adaire Fox-Martin, SVP for Industry Business Solutions (APJ,) what’s one of the biggest components of their winning formula, she’ll sum it up in one word – innovation.

Supported by increasingly more powerful software, companies are taking a look at the business they’re in and exploring innovative ways to become more competitive and profitable. Fox-Martin points to three focus area:

• Business processes – Finding an innovative way to improve business process – to get thing done more efficiently, says Fox-Martin – can generate incredible better,
• Product — Not only are companies striving to create completely new products, they are deeply engaged in bringing innovative features to existing offerings.
• Customer relations — The most interesting area of innovation, suggests Fox-Martin, is customer contact. Finding ways to narrow the gap between companies and customers is a top priority.

Companies are not innovating in a vacuum, Fox-Martin emphasizes. Instead, many firms, especially high tech companies, are partnering with SAP on co-innovation projects to simplify business processes to become more adaptable, flexible, and agile.

If the APJ region is indeed taking a more innovative approach to business, Fox-Martin offers an explanation. Because Asia does not have the same legacy infrastructure of other regions, it has become an early adopter of technology. This has given Asia the opportunity to leapfrog older technology and utilize tools such as the mobile platform, the Internet, and the social media framework to do things that were not previously possible.

Learn more about Fox-Martin’s views on innovation. Watch this Business Innovation video   and let us know what you think.