The Monthly “IT Innovation” Book Tuning: IT Creativity Mar, 2020

It is at the tipping point that top-performing companies see IT as an asset, capital, innovation catalyzer and source of business competitive advantage.

Within abundant information and emergent digital technologies, IT is a key component of a holistic business mindset to re-imagine “what is possible” - unleashing business potentials and improving business efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and maturity. The “art of possible” to reinvent IT in the digital age is to deliver the value of information in helping businesses grow, delight customers and doing more with innovation.

                    IT Creativity

Three Perspectives of IT Creativity 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.

Running Creative, Persuasive, and Logical IT Digital transformation represents a break from the past and presents a high level of impact and complexity. With the exponential growth of information and often technology-led digital disruptions, IT is being elevated to the “light power” of the business for identifying business opportunities and obstacles, navigating changes, and climbing the learning curve ahead of the rest of organization. In reality, IT organizations have come a long way from being pure technical specialists to being critical strategic partners for leading business growth and transformation. In fact, it is at the tipping point that top-performing companies see IT as an asset, capital, innovation catalyzer and source of business competitive advantage. It’s a strategic imperative for CIOs to run creative, persuasive and logical IT organizations.

CIOs as "Chief Instrument Officer": Embracing the Creative Side of IT to Make Digital Leap Many traditional IT organizations are perceived as a support center or an isolated function with “geeky image,” equipped with monolithic hardware, led via command and control management style, suffered from overloading tasks and even experienced the “brain drain.” Nowadays, IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business change and digital transformation. Besides scientific nature, how to embrace the creative side of IT to reinvent its contemporary image and make the digital leap?

Practicing Creative Communication to Bridge IT-Business Gaps Due to an unprecedented level of uncertainty, velocity, ambiguity, and complexity, misunderstanding, misinterpretation or miscommunication are the big causes of many business issues and human problems in our society. Usually, IT-business gap is caused by miscommunication, communication clarity directly impacts on the business effectiveness and organizational maturity. Besides technical dialect or finance language, should IT leaders practice creative communication to close IT-business chasm, enforce business relationships and promote IT as a trustful business partner?

Understand the Creative Side of IT Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. Different organizations have their own “innovation strength.” There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. The innovation-generating organization depends more heavily on its technological knowledge and market capabilities to develop and commercialize innovations; the innovation-adopting organization relies more on its managerial and organizational capabilities to select and assimilate innovations. IT organizations strive to become the innovation hub of the businesses, CIOs as Chief Innovation Officer: Where are the innovation hot spots and can you identify them?

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