It's also important to realize that not everything you try will be successful. That's the hard part. People assume that if they're investing money, then everything will work out.

When I started at Groupe Danone, we spent a lot of time getting the leadership to understand the change we were going to go through. Now everything from I&I goes through incremental pilots before being expanded out, and we're trying to take a more Agile approach. We try to provide some quick wins, solving some of the initial needs and problems that made us look at a new technology while keeping an end state in mind. But we don't know what that end state totally looks like until we work our way through.

Don't lose focus

The realization you must have, and that you must convey to your company's executives and your IS/IT staff, is that investing with new technologies is not enough. The key to innovation is solving business solutions. We like technology, and it's real cool when you get to go play with the newest, latest videocam, but your goal is to make the business more efficient.

So, start small and convince your executives that starting innovation somewhere can benefit everywhere. Specific initiatives for one business unit can expand to others.

Once we delivered practical solutions, the business offered additional funding because they saw the benefits. They realized what our focus on innovation brings to the table and how it will enable them to continue to grow.

Jeff Hutchinson is the CIO - North America for Groupe Danone, and a member of the CIO Executive Council.