9 components that should be part of every digital CIO’s innovation agenda
Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation, in general, is surely a management discipline. To keep relevant, IT has to shift its reputation from a cost center to the innovation engine of the organization. In fact, IT plays a crucial role in expanding the creative side of the business and scale up the innovation effect of the entire organization. The contemporary CIO’s responsibilities are to understand the business’s collaboration needs and innovation demands today and into the future. From there, they can build an IT-led digital innovation agenda which covers innovative thinking, innovation management, knowledge transfer, technology update, entrepreneurship, and people-centricity, etc. It is the multifaceted management discipline.
CIOs need to be creative enough to think out-of-the-box for embracing great ideas…and logical enough to plan, engineer and follow through. A great CIO with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new technology and abundance of information help to create fresh new opportunities. To make the digital paradigm shift, it starts with IT leaders and professionals who can think “out of the box” more often and broaden their lens to understand the business outside-in and do more with innovation.
With today’s information-driven business dynamic, there’s no shortage of problems to tackle, it’s all about being able to get all the way around the task, to see it from all interests. To harness innovation, it’s important for a creative team having people who do not have the same viewpoint of varying issues so that they can complement with each other’s viewpoints, broaden the points of interest and try new things to extend the thinking box and increase the odds of sparkling creativity. It is IT’s responsibility to identify opportunities for business transformation wherever analysis and assessment indicate the potential benefits of transformation efforts.
CIOs play the bridge role of integrating the art and science of digital innovation. Technology is often the disruptive force behind innovation and information is the gold mine all forward-looking organizations dig into. Thus, IT plays a crucial role in creating a disciplined and managed space for developing and testing new models, products and business approaches. It also shields innovation teams from the organization’s dominant logic and established standard operating procedures, to strike the right balance of innovation and process.
CIOs are at the unique position in driving business innovation and transformation and need to handle them cautiously but firmly. They should spend time with peer executives on the strategic effort alignment. Only with the support of top executive teams, they can row the boat. IT has a great opportunity here to catalyze innovation and lead digital transformation of the business and become the innovation engine of the organization.
Today, IT is the wing of every successful business. IT entrepreneurialism becomes a new fixture for management in their efforts to spark creativity, substantiate competitive position, affect the market landscape, and drive new revenue growth. The key here is to run IT as the software startup and gradually institutionalize and communicate innovations throughout the organization.
CIOs should think as an intrapreneur and act like a startup manager, go out and talk with varying shareholders, business executives, customers, and partners, to know their pains and gains and understand their tastes, current and future needs. Practicing IT intrapreneurship means to harness changes, cultivate innovative cultures, and learn to generate more novel ideas in diverse teams.
Practicing intrapreneurship in the large organization also doesn’t mean getting rid of all rules. Instead, a high-innovative business has more disciplines, not less.
