The New Book “IT Innovation” Introduction Chapter 9 The Alphabetic Elements in Digital Innovation and IT Maturity

In today’s digital dynamic and technical environments where IT is being used more and more around the globe for revenue generating initiatives and business is becoming IT. A digital ready IT organization is a threshold business competency and the catalyzer of digital innovation. It goes beyond the stage of IT-business alignment and move up to the level of integration and engagement. IT can weave all necessary business elements, from A to Z, either hard or soft, to orchestrate a digital symphony.
Justification: What’s missing in many organizations is the CIO’s ability to question the business’s requirements and justifications used for IT based projects. They also have to advocate for “departmental immersion” and other strategies to help IT become more integrated and aware of the organization as a whole. Business case justification is important in IT portfolio management. A business case provides the description and reason for starting an initiatives such as: What are the key drivers behind the project? What problem or even is driving the need for the project? What immediacy does the problem or event have and why does it need to be addressed now? Can the impact of the problems be measured and quantified ? etc. OVerall value, therefore, has to be judged at the enterprise level considering the overall satisfaction over each combination of cost, schedule, performance, and customer satisfaction.
Outside-in: Digital is the age of customer-centricity. IT is the Era of consumerization of IT, IT organizations need to be more aware of how to empower users before they ask for it. IT’s customers include both internal customers and external customers. The hard core of IT is becoming more and more ubiquitous and as a result, CIOs need to transform IT from a controller to a business enabler, from inside-out IT lens to outside-in customer point of view, to empower users with the right tools and information to make decisions at the right time; IT also needs to be transformed from an order=taker to a standard setter and rule comaker, not just fix the problems to keep the lights on, but make governance principles to improve IT and the overall business maturity for the long term.
Revenue-driven: There is almost no enterprise project nowadays where IT is not a big piece of the puzzle. Therefore, pursuing IT revenue-generating opportunities and measuring it in the right way is one of the best strategies. IT value is measured by optimization and consumption of IT assets in support of the business services. From IT leadership perspective, there is no one path to becoming a revenue-generating CIO. Digital CIOs today need to concentrate on the business information requirements that support the company growth. It is the value (often undervalued) of corporate information as the resource and defining how it should be used strategically to best business advantage.
Digital is the age of innovation. IT plays crucial role in breaking down silos and being intentional about developing processes that encourage collaboration and enforcing flexibility, IT has the very power to influence on an organization’s “personality.” The available digital technology just makes innovation easier to do now than in the past -less costly, more easily accessible.
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