The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Chapter 9 Introduction: The CIO as “Chief Intrapreneur Officer”

 The creation of corporate entrepreneurship is to boost both soft success factor like culture and hard success ingredients such as business capability and capacity.

The majority of organizations at the industrial age are manipulated by silo thinking and hierarchical management style. To break down silos, intrapreneur-executive leadership is an emergent digital trend. Corporate Entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship has been recognized as a potentially viable, it means for promoting and sustaining organizational performance, renewal and corporate competitiveness. Being entrepreneurial is first the mindset, and then attitude, skills are the easier part to be developed. IT plays a crucial role in driving change and leading digitalization. One of the most appropriate titles for the digital CIO is “Chief Intrapreneur Officer,” to run IT as the software startup.

IT is the business in the business: The digital revolution means that channels to customers, running IT as a customer-centric business. IT has both internal and external customers. IT doesn't exist to take the order from internal customers only. IT doesn't exist to do everything it is asked, in fact, IT is the business in the business and the digital engine of the entire organization. The role of CIO continues to evolve rapidly in the midst of the information in digital transformation. Today’s IT professional should understand that there are only business initiatives, it's important to "keep the end in mind" to either achieve business value or improve customer satisfaction. Because IT strives to be a revenue contributor to the business. IT needs to spend more resources on spotting business growth opportunities, looking for solutions which will directly benefit the external customers, improve the business competitive advantage, and in turn brings in increased revenue. Thus, always take the customer views as the basis of either strategy management or performance measurement, reduce the delivery cycle time to customers. IT is the business of the business, that is the way to go.

Practicing intrapreneurship in IT and the enterprise: The heart of entrepreneurship is about changes, and organizations no matter large or small, all face unprecedented changes, uncertainty, and velocity. If entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as an opportunity, and then, intrapreneurship is about creating new venture from within established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and inspiring innovation. Innovation is a mindset and a prerequisite to doing sustainable business these days. People are capable of innovating if they are capable of silencing the noise in the mind and thinking out of the box but also stay laser focus on the strategic goals. Practicing intrapreneurship is about creating the future via learning, experimenting, and discovering. Running an innovative business doesn’t mean everything goes rogue, practicing intrapreneurship in the large organization also doesn’t mean getting rid of all rules. Instead, a high-innovative business has more discipline, not less; it’s not about setting rigid rules but developing a set of fine-tuned principles and an effective framework to manage innovation in a structural way. It is about running IT with a healthy and shortened business cycle of planning, funding, designing, building, operating, securing, optimizing and maturing.

CIOs need to shift their management orientation and thinks like entrepreneurs: IT entrepreneurialism becomes a new fixture for management in their efforts to substantiate their competitive position, affect the market landscape, and drive new revenue growth. Practicing intrapreneurship in the large enterprise is the right way to reinvent IT as a growth engine for the business and a change agent to build a culture of innovation. A high-effective digital IT organization is about catalyzing top-line business growth by maximizing ROI to add up overall business value. Thus, the CIO needs to be a dynamic person with vision, openness, growth, and complexity mindset, with high ability to envision the digital trends, manage innovations, communicating to suit situations so as to craft strategies and make things happen. An entrepreneur’s mind is often innovative, being innovative is more important than any specific innovation. The digital CIOs need to be equipped with intrapreneurs’ mindset to expand their thinking boxes and getting a better understanding of the current boxes, figuring out which of them makes sense to challenges, experiment better ways to do things, with the right dose of risk tolerance, and manage a balanced digital innovation portfolio.

To run IT as the business, IT leaders and professionals should be equipped with the entrepreneur’s mentality, to practice strategic thinking, creative thinking and optimistic thinking, keep the business end in mind. The creation of corporate entrepreneurship is to boost both soft success factor like culture and hard success ingredients such as business capability and capacity, to drive business top-line business growth and long-term success.

Posted in: CIO Leadership,CIO Master