INNOVATION AND THE CIO

There is a new opportunity for CIOs to exert their influence and drive Change and Innovation.
Cloud, PAAS, and SAAS together with Agile development are enabling more functionality
faster, and they are also relieving some of the operational headaches for the CIO.
The time is now for CIOs to take advantage, step up, and own the Change and Innovation turf in
their organizations and get out from under the CFO.
All businesses must continually innovate to remain competitive and the CIO should be a critical
part of that dialogue, and be in the C-Suite reporting to the CEO. Cloud, SAAS and various
PAAS offerings from vendors such as AWS, Skytap and Microsoft can remove much of the
operational demands on the IT organization and enable faster application deployment. Perhaps
the number one business frustration is time to value, and a large IT requirements backlog. The
new Agile development methods and tools together with DevOps (tightly coupling operations
and development) allow more frequent releases of capability, and coupled with Design Thinking,
a greater real impact on business value.
Tools alone, however, are not enough. To fully take advantage of this the CIO needs real
engagement with the business and the C-Suite, and in regular dialogue with the CEO around
business strategy. Without this, there is also an increasing tendency for the business to embark on
rogue IT spending.
This new technology revolution can finally let the CIO play the right role, the Change and
Innovation Officer reporting to the CEO. A position that incidentally also helps the CIO get the
rest of the C-Suite engaged in IT, and own their piece of the technology pie.