Must Innovation happen outside of IT?
Download Quark snapshot: The Path to Digital Innovation Amidst Consumerization of Tech
Read the title again very carefully; it doesn’t say ‘the IT department’, it just says ‘IT’. In todays pressures we need to be very careful to fully understand exactly what the ‘IT’ really means in terms of the business capabilities it delivers together with the experience and governance models developed for successful operation. And right upfront lets recall if we are old enough, or do a little on line research engines to establish that this term was deliberately introduced in the mid 1990s to define a wholly different era of technology and its business use from the computing services that preceded it.
IT, IT departments and the role of the CIO to manage both, defined the rapidly growing new and innovative business use of networked PCs, and the adoption of Client-Server architected Enterprise Applications. This was a time of great business model innovation as the new ‘Information Technology’ allowed genuine innovation in how a business was organized around efficient processes that ran across the entire enterprise. The Business Schools dubbed the resulting Transformation of Business models and organization Business Process Re-engineering, or BPR, and this in turn led to the revolution of Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, which today has become so dominant in our thinking and methods when faced with new business requirements.
My point is at this time ‘innovation’ meant going outside the existing business model based on completely separate and self contained specialized departments where terminal based mainframes and mini computers were used to run non integrated separate departmental applications. In short you use the word ‘Innovation’ you should be carefully identifying something that couldn’t exist within the current circumstances and therefore by definition is happening ‘outside’ the existing circumstances!
That’s as true today in respect of Innovative Business models based on a new generation of touch screen, personal devices, supported by Clouds to deliver Apps, as it was back then to define the then new technologies of PCs, Networks, with Enterprise Applications supported on Client-Server. In fact we can easily go on stage further and identify Information Technology as having revolutionized the manner in which an enterprise operates its ‘Back Office’ internal ‘processes’ and ‘transacts’ the business outcomes. A key part of this is to reduce the involvement of expensive and error prone people as the benefit will be shown principally as ‘cost reduction’.
Conversely the new technologies and innovation in business are all about how an enterprise does business externally through improving the ability of ‘people’ to ‘interact’ around ‘events’ with the aim of optimizing the ability to win business revenues. Again conversely this means people, their experience, and judgment, are at the center of what creates ‘value’ in the form of increased sales, better service, etc.
So its time to return to the title and ask does the experience, methods and even role definition of ‘IT’ developed over the last twenty years to operate PC based Client Server data centric integrated large enterprise applications protected by the Firewall, really fit with the new genuinely innovative use of Tablet/Smart Phone based Cloud architected people centric interactions through Apps used outside the Firewall?
I’ll assume that you recognize this point, and accept the reality of the title question and understand exactly what is meant by ‘Innovation outside of IT’! BUT does this mean without the CIO and the experience of members of the IT department? After all there needs to be a recognition of the realities of a ‘joined up’ enterprise functioning responsibly within the requirements of compliance and the auditors. No, but it does mean approaching how to align with new business objectives based on completely new technologies with a recognition of this, and a change in approach. Consider instead the following question:
Not what is the role of IT in the enterprise, but ‘what role should technology be playing in the enterprise?’ That’s the question I am keen to address starting in my recent report ‘The Pathway to Digital Business for IT Amidst the Consumerisation of Technology’.
Download Quark snapshot: The Path to Digital Innovation Amidst Consumerization of Tech
