1. Create a business/IT rotation program. Businesspeople often don’t know what to ask for from IT, and IT people often don’t know about business situations where IT could be applied. Move IT people into the business and vice versa and watch innovation bloom.2. Move the focus from technology testing to simulation in a business context. Systems can work well and still fail because they don’t meet a business need. Test your systems in a business context—with real people, data and customers. 3. Build an innovation team. Innovation during the course of projects or daily business is accidental. Make it purposeful by devoting a small group to ongoing pilot projects and meetings with businesspeople.4. Mesh IT development with product development. Product engineers are often segregated from IT, but with increasing levels of technology built into products, IT people could help speed the development process or even collaborate on new products. 5. Look outside the enterprise to partner with others on innovation. A swarm of small, global companies has moved in to take the place of big, internal corporate R&D departments. 6. Squeeze savings out of the infrastructure and dedicate the money to innovation. A program to constantly reduce fixed costs means there will be more money for innovation…without budget increases. 7. Use process improvement methodologies (CMM, ITIL and so on) to decrease innovation cycle time. Using CMM to standardize and improve software development processes means new projects can be completed more quickly.8. Conduct interviews with all levels of the business. These discussions don’t have to be limited to specific projects. Interviewing businesspeople about what they do, what their problems are and what they’d like to do next is the first step toward innovation.9. Create a joint IT and business capital spending plan. Many companies consider IT and business spending separately. It’s time to merge them. Linking the IT budget to plans to build a new factory could make it a better factory.10. Design contractual requirements for innovation spending and planning with outside vendors. You devote a portion of your spending to innovation, so why not make business-specific innovation a part of your contracts with your vendors? Sources: Forrester Research, Gartner, CIO reporting Related content brandpost Who’s paying your data integration tax? Reducing your data integration tax will get you one step closer to value—let’s start today. By Sandrine Ghosh Jun 05, 2023 4 mins Data Management feature 13 essential skills for accelerating digital transformation IT leaders too often find themselves behind on business-critical transformation efforts due to gaps in the technical, leadership, and business skills necessary to execute and drive change. By Stephanie Overby Jun 05, 2023 12 mins Digital Transformation IT Skills tip 3 things CIOs must do now to accurately hit net-zero targets More than a third of the world’s largest companies are making their net-zero targets public, yet nearly all will fail to hit them if they don’t double the pace of emissions reduction by 2030. This puts leading executives, CIOs in particul By Diana Bersohn and Mauricio Bermudez-Neubauer Jun 05, 2023 5 mins CIO Accenture Emerging Technology case study Merck Life Sciences banks on RPA to streamline regulatory compliance Automated bots assisted in compliance, thereby enabling the company to increase revenue and save precious human hours, freeing up staff for higher-level tasks. By Yashvendra Singh Jun 05, 2023 5 mins Digital Transformation Robotic Process Automation Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe