A connected car that knows what its owner is going to do during the day. Car insurance sold by the mile instead of by the year. A unique inflight entertainment system that allows passengers to start watching movies on their iPad before the flight. What these innovations have in common is they didn’t start in a garage in Silicon Valley or in an office in Shoreditch, but emerged, respectively, from a global car manufacturer, the offices of a global insurance company and a major airline.

Such innovations by large corporates will grow rapidly as they become the most innovative companies on the block over the next decade and shrug off their traditional stuffy and inflexible image.

This is not the story of the past decade where our lives have been transformed as our smartphones allow us to shop, travel, play, bank, share, get fit, book a cab or even rent out our houses with a swipe of our fingers. The vast majority of the innovations around mobile – often resulting in billion-dollar companies – have come from startups and entrepreneurs spotting a market need, raising money and creating new technologies to meet evolving requirements.

But spare a thought for the big companies that have lived through this disruptive epoch, where banks, supermarkets, TV companies, taxi firms and other traditional businesses have had their worlds turned upside-down. These organisations have been struggling to keep up, as the likes of eBay, Amazon, Google and Netflix changed their lives, as well as ours.

And it is not just the 100-year-old corporations that face this challenge. Even the poster children for the digital economy can make missteps – Microsoft missed the internet, Google missed social networking, Zynga missed mobile.

Play the challengers’ game Today, most major corporates recognise they will have to play the tech challengers – which have completely transformed some markets or created entirely new ones – at their own game. This means they must become technology innovators as well. That is easier said than done. Big corporates are not, by their nature, set up to develop and foster ideas that may completely challenge their existing business models. No matter how hard they may try to create an entrepreneurial culture internally, there are inevitably major barriers. Entrenched business practices and operational structures, teams with expertise geared to the existing business models and, let’s face it, politics will all get in the way. This results in corporates being slow to grasp the challenges they face and implement change. Read more about managing innovation Managing the digital innovation process – what are the key strategic challenges for organisations that will be discussed in the boardroom over the next two years?

IT leaders think their businesses are unable to adapt to industry changes and cannot make fully informed decisions due to lack of data.

Technologies designed for extreme environments such as space or Formula 1 racing are increasingly driving innovation in everyday working life. That’s not to say brands are not good at reacting to market conditions, as many have created excellent digital channels to communicate or sell to consumers, but fundamental changes to business operations are more challenging to achieve. Nevertheless, now is the time for corporates to take innovation seriously as we enter a new era in the transformation of business by technology and disruption becomes vital to stay ahead of the competition. Expect to see eye-catching new tech innovations appearing from within banks, healthcare companies, transportation firms and retailers.