Three Perspectives of IT Creativity

To unleash the full digital potential, organizations need to understand that IT is not just technical or scientific, but also artistic and delightful.

With the overwhelming growth of information and often technology-led digital disruptions, Information & Technology becomes the most time-intense piece for solving innovation puzzles. Innovation happens at the intersection of business and IT, you have to manage it strategically and systematically in order to achieve a consistent business result. IT is no longer just the mechanical or monolithic hardware pieces to keep the business spinning or the mechanism for realizing a vision described by other C-level executives; it’s the innovation engine to run a digital organization. Here are three perspectives of IT creativity.

Develop innovative IT leadership: Being innovative is truly a state of mind. To reinvent IT for digital ready, CIOs must be open-minded and creative. Creative leadership is essentially anchored on the leader’s overall multifaceted resourcefulness. They can view the holistic business pictures and apply creativity in areas not explored yet. Every business is different, every industry is different, and the enterprise culture is unique. Thus, the innovation management practices come to mind first is a dedication to the time slot to pitch questions to their team. That also means to have the willingness to try something new, to test, to learn what you knew again, to listen and remain balanced. Being a creative CIO means learning fast, being inclusive, embracing candid and multi-viewpoints, and taking calculated risks. The digital era is the age of options, it provides opportunities for IT leaders to get really creative on how to delight customers and solve problems alternatively. That is, the multi-dimensional competencies to formulate creative or unconventional solutions to resolve problems, to show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances. Exceptional IT leadership is key to re-imagine IT and reinvent IT as an innovation hub to achieve the art of possible.

Explore the creative side of IT: The available digital technology just makes innovation easier to do now than in the past-less costly, more easily accessible. Businesses are looking for IT to add new innovative methods for management of complexity and investigating innovative business solutions. Creativity is the core of what makes IT strategic in any company, it is critical that creativity is focused not on the technology, but on how it can be used to advance the business objectives. IT shouldn’t just provide the cool gadgets and expect the new ideas will start flowing in automatically, creativity without a direction or purpose is building technology for the technology’s sake. IT is mainly an engineering discipline, engineering is not only about science, but is also the art because it involves personalized observation, judgment, design thinking, intuition, and innovation. Thus, digital IT leaders shouldn’t classify creativity and logic in two completely different disciplines, they are interconnected and multidisciplinary. IT needs to become an innovation engine of the business and a business enabler to catalyze business growth. CIOs must realize that stifling the creative side of the IT will set back business, and IT organizations would continue to be perceived as a cost center. Unfortunately, it seems that creativity is not encouraged in most organizations, it is imperative to build a healthy culture - the collective mindset to encourage learning and creativity. Innovative IT leaders need to discover creative ways to tackle innovation potential lying in an enterprise and to provide the necessary tools to unleash the creative force of IT.

Build an IT innovation framework: The art of innovation is that it involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel. The science of innovation is to take a structural approach to innovation management. Put briefly, to get the best business results, you need to structure the creative process to do innovation. Innovation often has a lot to do with external circumstances. A systematic innovation approach is to depict innovation as a system and build an innovation framework for aligning the various business components (people, process, resources, partnership, actions, controls, measurement, etc., to intensify innovation with focus and manage innovation in a structural way. It’s also critical for businesses to have objectivity and humility to realize that their systems or processes are outdated, it needs to keep updating the innovation framework, processes, and technology to speed up innovation management lifecycle. Because the robust systems and tools that enable the business to generate a winning concept on the consistent base is the prerequisite for sustainable business advantage and growth.

Understanding the element of art in digital IT is for achieving the art of possible and make a seamless digital transformation. To unleash the full digital potential, organizations need to understand that IT is not just technical or scientific, but also artistic and delightful. IT plays a crucial role in scaling up innovation practices, amplifying innovation effect, and gluing up the innovation framework which enables the business to manage innovation in a structural way.

Posted in: Creativity,IT Innovation