ESSAY - IT Innovation for ENTERPRISE IT DEPARTMENTS

 MAY2010, Lukas Svoboda

Overview:

Innovation is defined as “A new way of doing things that is useful”. Invention is about manifesting an idea while innovation is about putting something useful into practice. Often in the IT industry – particularly in the enterprise customer communities there can often be a general perception that IT innovation does not occur in IT departments. From this you can infer the perception is that there are not many new ideas coming out of IT departments. The following are some thoughts on some practical ideas for fostering IT innovation within an enterprise environment.

Background:

Many organisations are better at incremental improvements than startling new ideas. To that end, the executive management team of an organisation must decide the outputs they want from IT innovation and what they are prepared to visibly advocate. It is also important that whatever is put into place to foster innovation also focuses on practical outcomes and not just pure “invention” i.e. ideas for the sake of ideas. However, in order to start creating a culture of innovation employees must be compelled to believe new ideas are valuable and can see individual benefit from the contribution and subsequent development of new ideas.

The senior management of the IT environment then needs to decide whether they want to imbed innovation into the IT department culture as a fundamental way of doing business or just simply as a positive means to allow people to express and explore ideas. These are two fundamentally different approaches to IT innovation and will have a bearing on exactly how innovation should be approached.

What must be done to foster IT Innovation:

Practically speaking, innovation thrives where the handbrakes are removed around the ability to create new ideas. The cliché of “no idea is too stupid to consider” must ring true. Taking risks, succeeding and failing, around creating and developing ideas must be all be equally encouraged and rewarded. To this end, innovation requires 2 key foundations:

Innovation Culture – An IT department culture where innovation is as a matter of doing business. This implies the desire and visible support from an executive level in the overall enterprise, as well as the clear definition and communication of expected outcomes from innovation. The cultural backdrop needs to leave everyone with the feeling that innovation is important to the company and not just the IT department. It then must be supported by all managers in the IT department as part of usual routines.

Innovation Structures – This is about creating structures to sustain and make innovation highly visible and useful. There are many different ways to create innovation structures from setting up a dedicated innovation team through to running an innovation process to funnel the most useful ideas into practical outcomes.

Both “Innovation Culture” and “Innovation Structures” are required to institutionalise innovation; one without the other will see innovation just being a nice idea that fades. Both aspects should be designed, planned, and managed continuously. They will never happen spontaneously in a large organisation and must not be left to wither and die through inattention. One of the key things with creating an innovation culture is about creating motivation within people. The notions of challenging, curiosity, fantasy, self-imposed competition, cooperation, and recognition will all help foster innovation. If these “feelings” are present then motivation for IT innovation will occur and useful new ideas will be a natural consequence. 

Practical Mechanisms for IT Innovation

Although not fully exhaustive these mechanisms offer a good starting point:

Mechanisms to foster an innovation culture:

• Company executive management actively communicates a desire to foster innovation in the IT department and actively discusses how they will support it. Leadership and incisiveness must be shown as well as specific practices for innovation.

• IT department management, through words and actions, actively facilitates participation by staff in the appropriate innovation structures where there is the desire. Adding this behaviour into managers KPIs ensures it happens!

Suggested mechanisms for innovation structures:

• Bring out the “Innovation Creators” - Create forums and/or think-tanks where people can share ideas without prejudice. These can be generalised, or targeted to specific pain points (e.g How do we improve the useability of our desktop systems?). Institutionalise the ability for anyone, anywhere in the IT department to have an idea and submit for discussion.
• Setup up “Innovation Catalysts” - Have a panel or a friendly “dragons den” to review ideas with the ability to allocate budget and time to help turn an idea into something practical.
• Grow “Innovation Champions” – Create virtual teams who are responsible for brining an idea into reality; shielded away from the day to day of “business as usual” and standard project work. Support the innovation champions with technology labs, technology “toy rooms”, and creatively inspiring environments.

How do you measure the success of IT Innovation:

IT innovation should be no different to any other business activity – i.e. success should defined by agreed KPIs and measures e.g. the success of an idea process is measured by the amount of ideas submitted, number of people submitting ideas, and conversations creating a practical outcome i.e. something that makes a commercial difference.

All three measures used together give a balanced picture of success.

Be aware of the Innovation Killers:

IT innovation is far easier to kill than it is to foster. Therefore it is important that “Innovation Killers” need to be actively avoided – to the point that avoiding these becomes part of the innovation culture.

Innovation Killers:

• Even more management layers.
• Lots of paperwork, reports & reviews.
• Significant over-planning or under-planning
• Artificial competition or reward.
• Favouring people who appear to be go-getters.
• Being risk averse and afraid to challenge the difficult issues.
• Skewing to high-level thinking only.
• Valuing deadlines over doing it well.
• Demanding consensus on ideas.

Conclusion

IT innovation is a relatively simple concept to comprehend. However, it is difficult to instigate and requires ongoing dedicated effort in order to turn into a useful business activity. This effort must be “by design” if IT innovation is to have any chance to thrive.

Footnote

If you plan to use this essay in part or whole - please drop me a line and let me know your plans. Copyright (c) Lukas Svoboda. LUKAS AT SVOBODA DOT CO DOT NZ.

PDF Version is here: IT_Innovation_May_2010_Lukas_Svoboda.pdf (221.30 kb)