Innovation is vital for the success of every company. Unfortunately, it's often overlooked. Those brilliant ideas that occur to employees every day won’t see the light of day without nurturing from senior leadership. CIOs are uniquely poised to become the key figure in building innovation within midmarket companies.
This tutorial will walk you through how to get past obstacles that block innovation. It details what other CIOs and experts are doing to promote innovation within companies just like yours. You can inspire innovation through simple tricks like "management by walking around," or you may need to consider the CEO’s perspective and come at the problem from another angle. This briefing gives a deep dive into innovation-building tips and strategies, and helps you position yourself as the vital innovator within your company.
This guide to IT innovation is part of SearchCIO-Midmarket.com’s Midmarket CIO Briefings series, which is designed to give IT leaders strategic management and decision-making advice on timely topics.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Build innovation by avoiding common pitfalls
Every company has great ideas floating around but unfortunately for some innovators, most of those ideas will never see the light of day. Innovation can wither and die within an organization. In a difficult economy, cutting your training and development budgets would be a simple solution to financial woes. Although a quick and easy budget fix, this decision is not strategic in the long run and can be the first nail in the coffin for some companies.
CIO Scott Lowe describes how to recognize whether your company is inadvertently killing creative problem solving and idea generation. He also offers solutions to engage and excite the workforce while working to promote innovation. By avoiding common pitfalls and remembering to look for ideas anywhere, IT innovation can thrive.
Learn more in “Sound teamwork can help midmarket CIOs avoid innovation failures.”
Disruptive technology can promote innovation
It's unfortunately a familiar story: CEOs sometimes ignore the innovation attempts of CIOs. Though the CIO is the most valuable resource when it comes to technological advancements and potential, other C-level decision makers have differing opinions and problems that demand attention. So how does a CIO get his ideas heard and internalized by senior leadership?
CEO John Weathington advises CIOs to consider things from the CEO’s perspective. Ideally, CIOs will see new ways to appeal to the CEO while offering ideas that promote innovation. Weathington also recommends focusing on disruptive technology to bring your company to new areas of the marketplace. By leveraging disruptive technology, CIOs will help the business get ahead of the competition while optimizing its own strengths for success.
Find out more in “CIOs are promoting innovation through disruptive technology.”
Mobile innovation moves company ahead of competition
When it comes to IT innovation, the biggest lesson involves ownership. CIOs must examine the ROI on several options, including paying an expert to do the heavy lifting. When a midsized pizza chain struggled to separate itself from its competition, its CIO turned to mobile. By outsourcing the project, the chain was able to reach its audience quickly and deliver a better product than it could have sourced internally.
Our expert Phil Simon examines what CIOs can learn from this example and apply against their own internal projects and struggles. For midmarket companies without the luxury of an internal Web development team or mobile app programming expert, it makes sense to bring in some hired guns. It's imperative that CIOs recognize that sometimes the quickest and most painless solution really is the best scenario at the end of the day -- particularly when racing against technological developments in an aggressive market where companies live and die by a very small margin.
Learn more in “Mobile innovation makes the difference for pizza chain.”
How well do you build innovation?
Test your powers of observation and see how well you can translate what you've learned to promote and build innovation in the IT workplace.