CIOs can increase innovation in their organization by . . .

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CIOs can increase innovation in their organization by . . .

Reaching out to business innovators and create zones that provide an environment for rapid innovation. Getting their input and providing services and advice that help them pursue their ideas will ensure that you are brought into the loop when new opportunities surface. Also consider opening up centralized vendor sourcing so all business and IT leaders have access to an agile method for quickly sourcing and assembling new technologies into innovative business solutions.

IT leaders should also embrace new governance approaches that empower the business by providing guardrails and education, reserving strict control for only the most critical technology assets. Guardrails will ensure that systems can intercommunicate, data can be protected and recovered, and business processes can be restored if a disaster occurs. But for these guidelines to be successful, they must be anchored by an understanding of the business intent, not a purely IT-centric view of governance.

Most important, leadership teams must adopt an iterative approach to developing integrated business-technology strategies that assumes change and focuses relentless innovation on the core business competencies that will sustain their competitive advantage over the long term.


In a top-notch IT group, innovation includes initiatives that may seem mundane but that make the business operate faster, better and at a lower cost by doing something differently.

CIOs and other IT leaders must be able to quickly assess which disruptive technologies show promise for their organizations.

Leading organizations will reinvest in research budgets and internal processes that inform, disseminate and prepare their organization for an increasing pace in technology adoption.

IT leaders must identify where these technologies can create differentiation through new business models, grow profit and deliver money-saving market efficiencies.

-- Original page content developed from IDG Newswire

Recent Comments

By: SUDHAKAR ATMAKURU Posted on Tue, Jul 26 2011 11:09 AM
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"Innovation" and an initiative for that to be evolved from business leaders or employees minds all depend on how an innovative idea is brought up and encouraged to implement it without a fear of failure.

Business leaders should encourage their employees to come forward with their new innovative ideas that may be for better business service, quicker customer service,or a new innovative business product.

There are several methods to encourage and bring it up from the minds of employees. A few I would suggest:

1. Have business leads/representatives meet up with employees regularly (lunch-N-learn, seminar, or after-work fun-filled meet-n-chat session, etc) and educate the employees of current business strategy, market trends, a few snippets of recent issues with customers/users, etc.

2. Let employees know that there is a unit/division, like Business Innovation & Development, and encourage employees to communicate/discuss with the division for any new ideas.

3. After thorough review of innovative idea brought by an employee, assign a new driving role for the new idea-fired project to that individual without a fear of failure or any consequences of his/her trial at the company. This could be starting with developing a prototype of that idea and showing it to the business group for further funds allotment for its implementation.

4. Sharing the recent success of such new idea implementations and encouraging employees to come forward for more and more.

If there is no such encouragement, there is no use of just banging the drums for innovation.

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