IT Directors' Forum Analysis: Corporate venturing to benefit users

Users should invest in vendors developing new technologies to keep tabs on advances in IT and help their companies get an edge over competitors.

By acting as venture capitalists, IT directors can keep their eye on the ball and serve their companies to the point where they are no longer seen as an endless drain on resources.

This was the conclusion of Interregnum Venture Marketing managing director Ken Olisa, speaking at the IT Directors? Forum. By investing upwards of #250,000, users can get hands-on experience of new technology before everybody else, Olisa said.

?You?ll become a hero because your investment will have done a lot better than the property portfolio,? he said. ?The purpose is to give senior management of the business real knowledge of what?s happening at the pre-adopter and early adopter stage of technology.?

Olisa calls this technique corporate venturing. The benefit of new technology to the business is that your company gains competitive advantage for a small sum of money, while you gain new skills.

The challenge for IT directors, Olisa said, is how to keep tabs on what new technology is emerging. To do this, IT directors need to extricate themselves from the mire of dealing with managing the day-to-day ?plumbing? and making sure the wheels don?t fall off the IT infrastructure come 1 January 2000.

The way to do this is to grab a hold of what?s happening in IT. Find out which companies have new or emerging technologies, get them to sell their ideas to you so that you get a better understanding of them and then back them.

Olisa slammed traditional approaches to investigating new technology, such as leaving the job to one individual and having a monthly meeting with them.

His approach claims technology and strategic advantages. Mainly, users get a preview of new technologies ahead of their competitors. Olisa reminded delegates that money need not come from the IT budget, as organisations have research and investment budgets.

Other speakers focused on the need for IT directors to fit better into their organisation and lose the reputation for draining their company?s money.

? Report by Gavin Clarke.