How to use IT to enable innovation

IT as an enabler of business innovation? The chief information officer (CIO) as entrepreneur? Is it aspiration or reality?

If you approach the world positively, a downturn is a good time for innovation. The shortage of people and money can create the pressure that leads to creativity.

There are three areas where action will help organisations succeed in exploiting IT to enable business innovation:

Kick out Prince2
What more is there to say about innovation and Prince2? The focus of the Prince2 project management methodology ­ on organisation and control, and defining what to deliver before you have begun ­ is death to innovation.

It is a bad solution trying to solve the wrong problem. It takes the IT profession in the wrong direction if we want to contribute to business innovation. It has to go. The agile development movement provides much stronger foundations for succeeding with projects that result in business innovation.

Move from support to exploitation
Innovation is not just about new technology and spending more money. What about all the technology we already have in place and have barely begun to exploit? Why not start with Word, the rest of Microsoft Office, SharePoint or even your ERP system? Without a doubt you can quickly find innovations that make a real difference to individuals, teams or your wider organisation and perhaps start a bigger process of building a climate where innovation happens.

For most organisations, these opportunities just fall through the gaps between the helpdesk, which fixes problems, and the investment of technical skills in major projects. It is important to free up some resources to enable exploitation of existing IT investments.

Shift the focus from governance to relationships
IT people like to talk about governance. We put a lot of effort into setting up structures and processes. It is important to remember that outside the IT bunker this is not how real organisations work, at least not at the top level. Too much focus on formal structures indicates that the CIO is not part of the top team.

Governance structures are a means to an end ­ getting the right people together to take decisions. It is far better to take a different approach and focus on building relationships person to person. It is out of these relationships, not the IT governance committee, that innovation will grow.

The CIO ­ or the chief executive or any other leader ­ is not going to be the one who has all the good ideas. We need to get much broader involvement in innovation. Our staff, customers, suppliers, competitors, perhaps even the local business school and university should all contribute.

The CIO needs to go out and find innovators and learn from their ideas. They also need to provide opportunities for sharing resources to enable people to put their ideas into practice.

There are opportunities for quick wins in each of these areas. There are also opportunities for longer-term changes to structures and processes that will deliver value through business innovation. Now is not the time to retreat into the IT bunker. Get out there and take some risks. The world does not stand still.

Colin Ashurst is a senior teaching fellow in management information systems at Durham Business School