In today’s world, to be the next best thing you can’t just stick with what you know. With the transformation of technology increasing, companies must embrace and extend new innovative capabilities instead of protecting and defending the status quo.
“It isn’t the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up.”— F. M. Young
“Today’s CIO Needs to Be the Chief Innovation Officer,” written by Daniel Burrus discusses the role the CIO needs to play in the company to ensure the company is staying ahead of the competition. “The CIO’s traditional role, which is one of managing information, IT systems, and cost, has itself transformed to creating new competitive advantage, new products, and new services.” The CIO needs to be leading change within the company.
At Nike, a company IPS is currently working with, the IT function is not just viewed as an enabling support function, but a critical driver in the functional and process design. Perhaps this represents a changing view that some of the functions that utilize IT to execute business may not be aware of what is technologically possible. This also has a huge impact on how a company can staff and develop their teams, as not many people in IT have experience driving that kind of change.
The ability to innovate is happening faster and faster everyday and needs to be a major focus to stay competitive. As Barrus puts perfectly, “If it can be done it will be done … and if you don’t do it, someone else will. Likewise, if you don’t change the focus of your CIO role, someone else will.”
