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Why You Need To Plan for Innovation Today

Jeff Hutchinson, Groupe Danone's CIO for North America, created an innovation team to explore technologies that are key to the future of the business

By Jeff Hutchinson

May 09, 2008 — CIO — We all have a tendency to only look at what we're doing today, instead of stepping back and asking, "What do we need to focus on for the future?" Taking that step back is actually a step toward innovation and away from stagnation.

Maybe you don't need to be on the bleeding edge, and maybe you don't have the resources to invest in multiple areas of technology. Still, you need to ask yourself the question: What do we need to focus on to ensure the future readiness of our own IS/IT organization and to enable the businesses we support to go forward?

Within DAN'IS North America, Groupe Danone's - North America IS/IT team, we have Business Solution and Infrastructure Technology teams that focus on maintaining, enhancing and running solutions. They handle the daily block and tackling that makes IS/IT and the business successful—and make sure that we have the right balance of investment. But those of us in technology leadership positions also have a responsibility to consider how business resources will use technology in the future.

I'm part of the generation that remembers life before the Internet, that chooses not to go back from e-mail to written correspondence. Yet the generation coming out of school and into the workforce today is moving beyond e-mail in favor of online presence (e.g. IM and text messaging, chat rooms and wiki's). They don't believe in being held captive by e-mail; instead they operate by utilizing social networking tools.

They will change the way we do business and we have to be ready. To do this we will need new skills and tools to help us innovate and remain relevant in the global community.

Planning today for tomorrow's changes

To prepare for this change, DAN'IS North America has brought together a separate team called I&I, which stands for "Informing and Innovation." It's a small team, and its charter is to look at emerging tools and technology and find ways to mainstream them into the way the business operates. I&I not only evaluates the ideas emerging in academia, or the technologies coming out of the research labs. They also look at what is starting to come into the business workplace, at technologies that we haven't thought of as tools, such as Facebook and Second Life. They examine leading technologies and tools for their ability to enhance market share, create sales, and increase internal operational and employee efficiency.

It's hardly rocket science. Improving these areas are goals for every company. Yet more often than not, the solutions are focused on the present. We created the I&I team to look past that.

 

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