The Innovative CIO: How IT Leaders Can Drive Business Transformation

Book description

The Chief Information Officer's influence in the business organization has been waning for years. The rest of the C-suite has come to regard Information Technology as slow, costly, error-prone, boring, and unresponsive to business needs. This perception blinds company leaders to the critical value IT can deliver and threatens the competitive health and long-term survival of their enterprise.

The modern CIO must reassert the operational and strategic importance of technology to the enterprise and reintegrate it with every department and level of the business from boardroom to mailroom. IT leaders must design, sell, and implement a vigorous culture of IT competence and innovation that pervades the enterprise. The culture must be rooted in bidirectional exchange across organizations and C-level policies that drive technology innovation as the engine of business innovation.

The authors, international IT strategists and innovators, quantify the benefits and risks of IT innovation, survey and rank the myriad innovation opportunities from mature, new, and emerging technologies,and identify the organizational structures and processes that have been proven to deliver ongoing innovation. Buttressing their brief with dozens of case studies and specific examples, The Innovative CIO shows you how to:

  • Take advantage of the IT and business innovation opportunities created by new and emerging technologies

  • Shift IT innovation from afterthought to prime mover in strategic business planning

  • Inject IT into the dynamic core of your organization's culture, training, structure, practice, and policy

  • What you'll learn

  • Grasp the business basics of new information technologies:

  • Virtualization

  • Cloud Computing

  • Consumer-Driven IT

  • Bring-Your-Own-Device

  • Personalization

  • Process Automation

  • Mobile Computing

  • E-Commerce

  • Big Data and Analytics

  • Social Networking

  • E-Collaboration

  • Judge the business opportunities presented by new and emerging technologies.

  • Deploy new technologies to create and release new products.

  • Use new technologies to penetrate and capture new markets.

  • Harness new technologies to accelerate M&A time-to-value and add shareholder value.

  • Apply new technologies to improve staff retention and productivity.

  • Who this book is for

    The Innovative CIO targets all IT leaders—not only CIOs, but also VPs and directors of IT and IT operations, datacenter managers, and all other IT leaders who aspire to advance their careers as IT-providers to business leaders. This book serves secondarily as a guide to non-IT business leaders who are alert to the ways that IT can boost their abilities to innovate, to turbocharge their products, services, and processes, and to compete nimbly in fast-changing markets.

    Table of contents

    1. Titlepage
    2. Dedication
    3. Contents
    4. Foreword
    5. About the Authors
    6. Acknowledgments
    7. Chapter 1: Innovation Matters
      1. Why Innovate?
      2. Innovation Can Be Lost
      3. Innovation Is Imperative
    8. Chapter 2: Stories from the Trenches
      1. Innovation Everywhere
      2. Face It Head-on
    9. Chapter 3: Innovation Is Not the only “I”
      1. Pushmi-Pullyu
      2. The I’s Have It
      3. Shifting the Balance
    10. Chapter 4: Business Innovation vs. IT Innovation
      1. Which Is the Most Difficult to Achieve: Business Innovation or IT Innovation?
      2. CIOs Are Always on the Leading Edge of Technology
      3. Innovation Is Quantifiable
      4. Is This Invention or Incremental Innovation?
      5. Business Innovation Requires an Understanding of the Corporate Strategy
      6. CIOs Need to Understand the Context in Which the Company Works
      7. New Market Opportunities
      8. Out-of-the-Box Thinking on Existing Markets
      9. Creating IT-Aware Business Leaders
      10. IT Innovating IT Is Not Business Innovation
    11. Chapter 5: Pull and Push
      1. The Business “Pull”
      2. The IT “Push”
      3. The Third Way
    12. Chapter 6: Opportunities to Innovate Today
      1. Virtualization
      2. Cloud Computing
      3. Personalization
      4. Automation
      5. E-commerce
      6. Big Data and Analytics
      7. “The Internet of Things”
      8. Gamification
      9. Near Field Communications
      10. Agile Development
      11. Conclusion
    13. Chapter 7: Innovating with Consumer-driven IT
      1. Understanding Consumer-Driven IT?
      2. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
      3. Mobile Computing
      4. Social Networking
      5. Consumer Cloud
      6. Other Consumer Technologies Driving Business Change
      7. Conclusion
    14. Chapter 8: Opportunities to Innovate Tomorrow
      1. Rescuing Your Company with Future Innovations
      2. Recognizing That You Are at a “VisiCalc or iPad Moment”
      3. Creating the Crystal Ball
      4. Networking Is a Future Opportunity
      5. Business Expansion Using Future IT Innovations
      6. Innovation Delivers Growth Through Mergers and Acquisition
      7. Crystal Ball on Standby: The Future Is Nearer Than You Think
    15. Chapter 9: Making Innovation Intentional
      1. Fostering Innovation
      2. Catching the Butterfly
    16. Chapter 10: Connecting IT Innovation with Business Value
      1. How to Align Efforts in Innovation with Broader Business Values
      2. Making IT Innovation Part of the Strategic Planning
      3. Reporting and Measuring the Business Value of Innovation
      4. Overcoming Institutional Objections and Barriers
    17. Chapter 11: The Dirty Little Secrets of Innovation
      1. Most Innovation Will Fail
      2. Innovation Will Cost You Money
      3. Innovation Can Be a Career-Limiting Move
      4. Good Innovation Sets a Bad Precedent
      5. Not All Innovation Is Good Innovation
      6. Innovative Ideas Are Not Enough
      7. People Will Want You to Fail
      8. Innovation Is an Art, Not a Science
      9. Not Everyone Can Innovate
      10. Innovation May Cannibalize Your Business
    18. Chapter 12: What's Next for Me?
      1. What Is an Innovative CIO?
      2. Creating an Innovative Organization
      3. Why Would You Stick Out Your Neck to Innovate?
      4. How Can You Develop a “Nose” for Innovation?
      5. Is Innovation in Your Title?
      6. Can You and Your Culture Adapt to Become More Innovative?
      7. Do You Have the Attention Span to Be Innovative?
    19. Summary
    20. Index

    Product information

    • Title: The Innovative CIO: How IT Leaders Can Drive Business Transformation
    • Author(s): Andi Mann, George Watt, Peter Matthews
    • Release date: December 2012
    • Publisher(s): Apress
    • ISBN: 9781430244103