IBM: Enterprise wide innovation goals

More than ever, CIOs are being asked to contribute actively to business growth, competitive differentiation and innovation. With its central role in the organization, IT has the power to drive new levels of productivity. IBM discusses the top three priorities that CIOs must address when constructing an IT strategy that supports enterprise wide innovation goals. The three priorities are:

• Business model innovation
• Collaboration
• Integration between IT and business

Collaboration is one of the most critical capabilities IT can provide. Companies that support extensive collaboration tend to outperform their peers, achieving greater gains in revenue growth, operating margins, productivity and customer satisfaction.

By enabling employees to collaborate effectively, organizations can drive innovation from the ground up. Collaboration should extend beyond the enterprise's four walls, encompassing partners, customers, consultants, competitors, associations and academic groups. Independent collaborative communities hold unparalleled power to set industry standards and solve business, technological, scientific and societal issues. To account for organizational and technological complexity, the CIO should address four main dimensions of the organization, including:

• Segmentation model
• Assessment
• Metrics
• A plan that addresses culture, technology, services and the extended enterprise

Failing to understand variations and interdependencies across the enterprise can cause confusion and conflict. Individuals stand to play different roles when contributing to innovation: dreamers, implementers and consumers.

The success of initiatives must be measurable in both qualitative and quantitative terms, but it's not always easy to track the efforts of collaboration. Collaboration practices within a given organization can be complex, with shift, overlapping processes, tools and requirements across innovator, classes, business segments and activity domains. As an important liaison between IT and the business, the CIO holds the responsibility for recognizing that each employee faces different challenges based on innovator class, business segment and activity domain.