IT Management Slideshow: How to Increase Innovation within Your IT Teams

Do you effectively encourage innovation within your IT teams? If your department spends most of its time putting out fires and making sure the "IT train" is running on schedule - leaving agile thinking as an afterthought&#151then there's plenty of room for improvement. The recent book, "The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators" (Harvard Business Review Press/available now), provides a series of building-block steps to incorporate innovation as part of a department/company culture. To help readers achieve this transformation, authors Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen outline discovery skills such as questioning, observing, associating, networking and experimenting. Real examples used in the book include those that have helped Amazon, Apple and Google emerge to the top of the "most innovative" company lists. Dyer is a professor of strategy at the Marriott School at Brigham Young University. Gregersen is a professor of leadership at INSEAD and consultant to global organizations on innovation. Christensen is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and is considered a top authority on disruptive innovation. Here are are eight "innovation steps" explored in the book: