IT and Innovation
The February 1st issue of CIO Magazine carries an article on innovation and benefits IT can bring to the process as an enabler. CIO suggests that as product lifecycles continue to shrink, the pressure to bring the innovation cycle down to shorter timeframes will be even greater. Internal R&D departments can no longer afford to do it all on their own –- and innovation as a result, is becoming a distributed process, requiring the collaboration of customers, suppliers, independents and even competitors.
How can IT help? CIO provides these elements that specifically requires IT as an enabler:
What a concept! Collaboration, flexibility, information access, and, the delicate balance of process standardization and integration –- think of your IT organization, and ask how well they do any of those. More likely than not, your IT organization is stuck in time about decade ago, and see those suggestions as dangerous –- if not downright crazy.
How can IT help? CIO provides these elements that specifically requires IT as an enabler:
Collaboration. Communications is critical among both internal employees and external contractors. Agree on a medium, whether its e-mail, IM or fancy collaboration software, and get everyone using it.CIO also profiled P&Gs use of IT as an enabler to their R&D process, and cites the requirements that IT needed to meet in order to get into the game: flexibility, scalability, cross-functional integration and collaboration.
Data access.Easy access to research information is the basis for doing collaborative innovation work with outsiders. Make project data available in a format that is standard, simple and easily viewable –- think PDF and HTML.
Process standardization and automation.Standard templates and automated workflows that don't depend on specialization systems are important to getting multiple outside contributors involved in the process. Such tools also allow you to chunk up workflows so that one group can pick up where another left off. The caveat: Dont let standardization stomp on creativity –- its a delicate balance.
Cross-functional integration. Researchers and engineers dont own innovation anymore. Find ways to connect other functions to the innovation process –- especially those that deal with customers, like sales, marketing and customer service and give them a voice.
What a concept! Collaboration, flexibility, information access, and, the delicate balance of process standardization and integration –- think of your IT organization, and ask how well they do any of those. More likely than not, your IT organization is stuck in time about decade ago, and see those suggestions as dangerous –- if not downright crazy.
Comments
Post a Comment