My editor hates innovation. Actually, what she really hates is the way the term “innovation” gets dropped onto everything, particularly in the technology sector. The term and what it incapsulates is a relatively recent phenomenon in East Coast conversations, after a long Silicon Valley gestation. But innovation as a corporate buzzword has gained new legs for legitimate reasons.
IT departments are finally figuring out how to move from cost center to revenue generator. As they transfer necessary but dull computing functions to cloud-based services or outsourcers, CIOs and senior IT execs can take a lead role in how the company innovates by driving the adoption of new collaboration tools and processes. See, for example our recent Sector Roadmap report on innovation platforms (subscription required).
Even more, as “software eats the world,”IT departments can become better contributors to what the company sells. They must reallocate resources away from automating back office functions and set them on re-inventing the company as a collection of services. But the result needs to be more than just a collection; it needs to be a network.
I’m old enough to remember when Sun Microsystems’ tagline was “The network is the computer.” Nowadays, it’s the company itself that’s the network, and so is its product.
Company as network
As Haydn Shaughnessy details in the Sector Roadmap, most of the products calling themselves innovation platforms (from Spigit, Hype, Brightidea, and others) are optimized for old-school practices: find an idea, try it out, move it through “graduation gates.” Most are thin at bringing IT and business management together in a truly transformational context. Imaginatik does relatively better.
He argues that this collaboration, and other big transformations like creating new revenue models and exposing assets through APIs, needs a better support platform. That platform must act as a part of a network that includes feedback loops inside and outside of corporate walls, extending the network to an organization’s supply chain and customers. Features from so-called listening platforms (subscription report) need tighter integration.
Unsurprisingly, the tech industry is farther along this type of innovation scheme than most. But financial services have started to do better at platform management and social ecosystems for customers and partners.
For once, IT execs are in a good position to promote, rather than inhibit, these new organizational networks. In supporting new tools and meeting modern workforce expectations, they’re not as far behind as conventional wisdom would suggest. In fact, they’re often ahead of the workforce.