IT innovation: How to avoid being a one-hit wonder

How top IT organizations come up with bright ideas, time after time

Contributing writer, Computerworld |

There were no big brainstorming sessions, rah-rah team meetings or executive committees convened to devise a plan to drive FiOS TV customers away from using call centers in favor of self-service ordering, the more cost-effective option.

Instead, a junior programmer came up with the idea to build a click-to-order option that viewers could use instantly with their remotes. The programmer approached his manager and got the OK to build a prototype, which he delivered within months.

The click-to-order feature, which started rolling out in 2007, boosted self-service orders from 5% to 55% in just one month, cutting costs and inspiring click-to-order uses in other areas of the FiOS lineup too.

"He hit a gold mine," says Shaygan Kheradpir, CIO at Verizon Communications Inc.

Kheradpir says the junior programmer's ability to run with an innovative idea wasn't a fluke; Verizon's IT shop is designed to enable that kind of innovation to happen again and again.

"The underlying mission for Verizon IT is to look for opportunities where IT can make a quantum leap in performance for the business," Kheradpir says.

The Building Blocks of Innovation

Consultants say the following elements are key to building an environment that can sustain innovation:

Give employees the right to fail. Create an environment that doesn't punish workers for having tried something that ultimately didn't work. "It's hard to innovate when you're afraid to be wrong or make a mistake. Part of innovation is stretching or thinking outside the box, and more often than not, you're wrong," says Philip Garland, leader of the CIO advisory practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Spread responsibility for innovation throughout the organization, top to bottom. "Anyone can have a good idea," Garland says. Besides, if just a few people champion innovation, it could go away when those people move on to other companies.
Develop partnerships with other departments. To sell technology-driven innovations, IT needs to understand and articulate how it will help the company reach its goals, says Ian Hayes, president of Clarity Consulting. "Ultimately, there are a lot of great things we can do, but if it doesn't fundamentally drive something that affects the bottom line, then it's just a nice-to-have [item]," he says.
Create a central repository for ideas and experiments. Garland likes the idea of innovation labs or centers, housed within the IT department, where people can try out new gadgets or gather to hear from various sources, such as vendors or outside speakers, about bleeding-edge technologies.
Establish processes and ownership. Organizations should have a process for taking a promising idea and testing it out, Garland says. Similarly, someone needs to take on the role of facilitator to prioritize and guide ideas through the development process. That person could be the CIO, an innovation officer or another key leader.

—Mary K. Pratt

IT leaders at other companies share Kheradpir's outlook. The keys to making innovation a sustainable process, they say, include understanding the business inside and out, setting up a team dedicated to trying new ideas, and not being afraid to fail.

Verizon Communications

For Kheradpir, innovation in IT is all about giving workers opportunities to see and develop ideas that they think can make a difference in the company's business, whether it's in product offerings, customer service or cost control.

But to do that, Kheradpir says, his staffers can't be isolated from the employees working in the company's other divisions. So he sends his teams into the field to see how their business-side colleagues do their jobs.

"You're going to dream a lot better stuff if you're side by side with the front line -- in the call center, in the stores, in the trucks, doing installations in people's homes," Kheradpir says. "That's where you see the real problems and opportunities. And that's where you can make a difference."

Indeed, the junior programmer who developed the click-to-order function had been riding around with a technician doing home installations, which gave him the opportunity to ponder how to make FiOS TV installations more effective.

IT Leadership

1 2 3 Page 1 Next

Page 1 of 3

Bing’s AI chatbot came to work for me. I had to fire it.