Strong Signals: Platform Shift
By John Parkinson
For 40 years, IT vendors have been focusing on selling products, not on answering business problems, and the result is a -business automation infrastructure fraught with complexity and fragility. So it's a good thing that the industry is moving toward a platform mentality with a focus on what's possible from a business sense, and away from selling "speeds and feeds." The bad news, says columnist John Parkinson, chief technologist for the Americas at Capgemini, is that many vendors still push speeds and feeds. What will be the key buying differentiators when speeds and feeds don't matter? Reputation, reliability, quality, interoperability and adherence to open standards.
Leading Edge: Creativity for the Long Haul
By Warren Bennis
Creativity is like love: The question is not how to get it, but how to make it stay. In his final column for CIO Insight, Warren Bennis writes that the surest way for individuals, as well as organizations, to stay creative is to seek stimulating new ideas and people. Companies should establish corporate universities that go beyond offering the standard business school fare by providing exposure to new thinking in related fields, and to fields that tap personal creativity, such as acting and design. Survival in business means looking forward, not back, and only when we are exposed to new ways of thinking can our reinvigorated imaginations go into overdrive.
Analysis: Innovation in America
By Michael Fitzgerald
In all the uncertainty about the effects of globalization on the nation's economy, innovation has been called upon again and again as the country's saving grace. But a rising tide of concern over whether the U.S. can sustain its innovative edge has washed over the business and academic community. Data show a gradual decline in the funding of basic research and a decrease in the number of science and engineering students in the U.S. But there is also ample evidence, argues business writer Michael Fitzgerald, that the U.S. has two key advantages: the strongest capital markets in the world, and an abundance of risk tolerance.
Case Study: Eastman Kodak Co.
By Edward Cone
Kodak's film sales are collapsing faster than anyone imagined. And while the company recently passed Sony to gain first place in the U.S. digital camera market share wars, the margins in that business are thin. That's why Kodak has come to rely on its information technology department to support its innovation efforts. But the company must build on more than its digital cameras, and to do so, reports Senior Writer Edward Cone, it must innovate its business processes as well. Everything from the global supply chain to target markets is changing, and some of the old formulas that worked in the film industry don't necessarily apply anymore.
Expert Voices: Eric von Hippel
With Edward Baker
Most corporations, says Eric von Hippel, are stuck in what he calls the "find a need and fill it" mode of innovation. That state of mind not only limits their ability to innovate; it keeps them from understanding that lead users—customers and companies who like to innovate and who create successful innovations—are the real source of the best innovations. In this interview with CIO Insight Editor Edward Baker, von Hippel, a professor of management and head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, advocates the transformation of how corporate innovation takes place and the development of a new set of tools for finding those lead-user innovations.
Research: IT and Innovation
By Allan Alter
Emerging technology doesn't make companies innovative; rather, innovative companies make emerging technology valuable. That's the top conclusion from this month's annual survey on emerging technologies. According to the 396 senior IT executives who participated in the survey, most IT organizations are actively involved in product, service or business process innovation. Not only are innovative companies more likely to be early adopters of new technology, but IT executives at these firms are almost twice as likely to report significant payoffs from new technologies than those who work for companies that are not innovative.
Strategic Technology: IT Asset Management
By Debra D'Agostino
Roughly 81 percent of CIOs say that reducing complexity is a top goal, yet analysts estimate that nearly a third of IT budgets are being wasted because of poorly managed service contracts, overlicensing of software products and unused hardware. Getting a handle on the topology of your systems is not an easy task, but doing it right can lead to huge business efficiencies, says Reporter Debra D'Agostino. IT asset management can help cut costs, simplify systems, ease integration woes during a merger, and comply with federal regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley. It can also help your company make smarter decisions about the value of outsourcing, and improve business processes by giving IT staffers a better way to track how assets are linked.
