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Focus on IT industry – Hard-wiring innovation into your working methodology...

Towards the end of 2006, IBM published a major piece of research called the Global CEO study. It was a very long report, so lets focus on some of the headlines. Here are some extracts...

• ‘After years of cost cutting and efficiency campaigns, business leaders in companies of every size and across the industry spectrum are refocused on top-line growth – and they’re seeing innovation as the means to achieve it. With globalisation, commoditisation and technological advances all forcing significant change on the business, these organisations are being compelled to act in order to gain competitive advantage. They know that exponential growth lies ahead for those who lead the innovation movement and seize opportunities to differentiate themselves’
• ‘While CEO’s still believe that product, service and operational improvements are important, they feel that innovation must be applied to a company’s very core – to the way it does business… many are seeing the way they do business as an important differentiator because such innovations do not invite imitation and commoditisation the way that product and service innovations do’
• ‘CEO’s viewed internal and external collaboration as essential prerequisite for innovation’
• ‘They see that integration of business and technology as imperative for innovative efforts to yield their highest potential. IBM’s financial analysis… reinforced this view. Organisations which were effective at integrating business and technology insight delivered significantly better financial results (in terms of revenue growth and operating margin)’
• ‘CEO’s identified ‘inflexible physical and IT infrastructure’ and ‘insufficient access to information’ as two of the top ten obstacles to innovation’
• ‘CIO’s have an important, but challenging role to play in driving business model innovation. CIO’s can begin by building the right climate within the IT organisation. By looking inward first, they improve the way IT approaches innovation and the rest of the business. They can also …. Change their own business model to encourage innovative thinking. CIO’s can lay the physical foundation for collaborative thought by assuring a highly scaleable, highly flexible infrastructure is in place and capable of handling the demands of the expanded innovation horizon’
• ‘IT (needs to) become a credible business partner to the rest of the organisation. That means that CIO’s have to see and manage IT as a business, rather than as a cost centre with its own set of rules and accountabilities’
• ‘Creating an environment that encourages knowledge and information sharing should be top of the CIO’s agenda’
• ‘But today’s CIO’s must also provide an amiable context for innovative thought. The CIO needs to actively cultivate an entrepreneurial atmosphere in which business and technology integration occur naturally’

Stirring words! It’s good to understand the pressures our clients are under, but what direct implications does this have to us as IT suppliers? If we follow the chain of thinking through…Businesses need to innovate….. so IT departments need to support that innovation…. so we as IT suppliers need to support our clients in those IT departments to innovate….how do we do that? .... By being innovative ourselves! 

Numerous research exercises have revealed that in the view of IT clients, one of the main things that sets the best IT suppliers out from the pack is their ability to proactively suggest ideas for improvements and cost savings…. Not just wait for these to be demanded by the client.

It is worth asking yourself…

• How often do you, as a supplier, come up with innovative suggestions for your clients, on a proactive basis?
• Do you know enough about their business to know what kinds of innovation they would appreciate?
• Do you have the kind of relationship with your clients where they would listen and trust your recommendations?
• Are you in the position to give them uncomfortable feedback, if that is what they need to hear to meet the challenges they are facing? 

There are so many myths about innovation.

People often believe that innovation is something done only by boffins in backrooms. In fact the best innovations come out of having a real empathy for the needs of your clients. Think about Trevor Baylis and his wind up radio that came from an empathy for people in remote African villages who needed radio as an important lifeline and had no access to electricity. The first key to innovation is having enough knowledge and empathy for your client’s pressures and challenges – what is keeping him or her awake at night. The old phrase ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ really applies here. There is nothing more boring and irritating for clients than to listen to a sales person raving about some innovative new product which has no relevance

The second myth is that only really clever people can innovate. My experience is that if you care enough about an issue, and keep your eyes and ears open, a solution will emerge. Scientists would call it ‘selective perception’, religious people would call it ‘divine intervention’ – either way, if you have a problem upper-most in your mind, the chances are you will read a relevant article, see a relevant television programme, bump into the right person to give you the right advice, or the solution will come into your mind.

People believe that innovating is a lonely and isolated task. In fact the best innovations come from collaboration (as the IBM research revealed). If you have a problem you need to solve, share it and involve others. People love being asked their opinion, and can very often see the situation more objectively and so think much more clearly

People believe innovation is about being leading edge. In fact often in practice innovation is about taking an idea from one context and re-applying it somewhere else – for example many libraries have introduced innovative ways of checking out books that were borrowed from the supermarkets. In your role you can often take an idea that has worked in one context and apply it to another

People believe that only senior people can innovate, and people lower down follow orders. This has been disproved so many times when junior people come up with the crucial idea that makes the difference. One major mobile phone company is insisting that every member of their board has a mentor who is less than 25 years old, to keep them in touch with the real issues in their market

The final myth is that innovation is like a bolt from the blue that happens only now and again. To become an exceptional IT supplier, innovation needs to become a habit.

So ask yourself - how much do you build opportunities for innovation into your working life?

• Do you have a coaching culture where people are encouraged to think of their own solutions and so get those creative juices flowing?
• Do you have regular account review sessions where you use a collaborative and creative approach to solving client issues? Are your reviews run as creative sessions or tense interrogations about figures?
• Do you foster empathy for your clients? How much do you focus on client issues in your team meetings? How much ‘share of mind’ do your clients get?
• And finally in the words of the IBM report are you providing ‘an amiable context for innovative thought’ Creativity happens most when you are in an optimistic, motivated, energetic and curious kind of mental state. And importantly when you think your views are valued and will be heard by the people that matter. It happens least when you are over-stressed, rushed, irritated, depressed, or feel like your view does not count. This is the crucial difference between good stress when you really want a result and care enough to think creatively, and bad stress where the creative part of your brain shuts down completely. Only you can tell what state you are in…. and often only you can do something about it.

In conclusion, as IT suppliers, being innovative in a proactive way is one of the main things that will differentiate us in our client’s eyes. This is not something that should be left to the R&D department, it is something every individual in the sales force can contribute towards. Our advice would be to ‘hard-wire’ it into your daily routines so innovation becomes a habit that you never lose.

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