Innovativeit

IT-driven innovation, in general, is surely a discipline that covers innovation management, knowledge, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, or information mining to improve business growth and profitability.

Nowadays information technology is permeating everywhere in the organization; Information is useless if it cannot transform into business insight or foresight, and technology by itself is the means to the end, not the end itself. 

The power of information technology management is to deal with the mountain of information with both technology and human know-how, convert information into invaluable knowledge or real-time insight in handling “VUCA’ new normal and solving business issues effectively.


Run, maintain, effectively manage existing and new technology: Information technology is the backbone to run a contemporary organization. Keep in mind though, the long-term IT management success will require maintainability, reusability, scalability, etc, lowing IT overhead and technical risk. IT management should not rush to new technologies without exhausting the benefits available on the existing technology. Unique challenges become more apparent as we push the limits of the available technology, which pushes us to find a solution to the problem at hand. IT management must be able to develop and optimize IT operational functions and harness value added IT capabilities within itself. It is something to have IT resources, people and operational IT processes refined to the point that they are nimble, can adapt to changing business demands in a timely fashion.

IT leaders should share their technological vision and educate business about IT capacity and complexity and marketing IT-enabled business capabilities & opportunities within the company. They should educate IT teams on the business context and encourage them to engage with business counterparts in a value-oriented manner. IT management needs to optimize operational costs for achieving business efficiency and effectiveness, striking the right balance between being an enabler and controller for sustaining operations and improving its effectiveness and efficiency. If you can only manage what you measure, it is critical to define key performance indicators, evaluate & measure IT and business capabilities to achieve the expected result.

Help to innovate business based on process and scope: Processes define how basic and routine functions are executed consistently across the organization to implement strategy. Often, people in organizations follow processes mindlessly, at times just because it becomes a need. How can you develop the most appropriate business process if you don't know the business goals at all for solving the business problem? Business capability can "contain" many services, processes, and functionality in which IT is one of the most critical elements. IT needs to keep processes nimbler, shifting from bits, bytes, and lights to integration, improvement, innovation and interface.

An agile or smart process is rigorous to adapt to the changes; it can handle ad-hoc and exceptional matters smoothly. A smart process follows process management principles, but encourages innovation as well. The challenge for IT management is about getting out from the daily burden, spending more resources and time on innovation-related activities, making innovation a persistent and shared reality across functional boundaries and geographical territories, scale-up, getting independent checks and balances for the overall innovation solution you are trying to develop.

Apply technology in new and innovative ways to stay ahead of competition and industry: Understanding the technology is one thing, understanding the impact of the change it may bring to the business is another thing entirely. Is the technology proven or is it so new that it presents undue risk to the organization? IT should try new technologies when there are clear returns that can't be found in the existing technologies, of course with great care on the potential risks. They need to be introduced to the nuances of technology and how it helps before they can become proactive. Applying technical capabilities to market opportunities is where the magic happens. Often, technology is the disruptive force behind innovation, forward-looking companies apply technology in new and innovative ways to stay ahead of competition and industry.

Innovations happen because of specific business needs. IT leaders should drive the corporate vision and strategy through effectiveness and innovation in the knowledge and information channels. They look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities. IT leaders should proactively work with the business partners to ride emerging trends, leverage the latest digital technologies to fuel innovation engines, integrate different components into differentiated business competency, and refine information to capture customer insight and business foresight for improving innovation management maturity.

IT-driven innovation, in general, is surely a discipline that covers innovation management, knowledge, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, or information mining to improve business growth and profitability. And depending on the company’s competitive environment, their impact would increase over time.

Posted in: IT Innovation,IT Performance Management