4 Ways CIOs can Drive Technology Innovation

By Emily Pribanic - Last Updated on January 6, 2020
4 ways cios can drive technology innovation

It’s important to drive technology innovation in your company but how can you achieve that?

Driving technology innovation in your company is essential but can be difficult if you don’t know where to begin. With these four ways, you are sure to get your organization excited about their digital transformation and promote a culture that welcomes innovative ideas from all departments.

Over the past few years, CIOs have been increasing their adoption of innovative technology. Digital transformation is essentially using technology to drive innovation, so this gives CIOs an excellent opportunity to be front and center for this transformation. It may be difficult, though, for CIOs to know how to drive this technology innovation.

With proper technology and innovation management, CIOs can easily pull innovation to their company, especially with new innovation trends and these four ways to encourage their company to adopt new digital technology trends in every department.

How to Drive Tech Innovation at Work

Promote an Innovative Culture

The best way to push IT technology in 2018 is to promote a culture that adopts and welcomes innovation. When CIOs and other innovation leaders make time and space for employees to focus on innovation and even allow them time to focus on separate side projects, they create an environment that encourages people to think and act creatively. An excellent way to promote innovation in your company is to set up a physical or even a virtual space where employees can experiment with disruptive technologies and prototypes. It is important to remember, though, that promoting a culture of innovation and allowing people to experiment means that sometimes things fail so as a CIO or innovation leader, you must accept this. Just make sure though, that you encourage employees to learn quickly from their mistakes.

Get Leaders on Board

To help drive digital innovation technology in your company, it is essential that all company leaders are on board to drive this innovation. This is sometimes difficult for CIOs to achieve but one way they can encourage company leaders to get on board with new innovation is by collaborating to address a specific business problem. When CIOs collaborate with company leaders to use innovation to solve a business problem, they will better understand what the end goal is and what roles are needed to achieve that goal. CIOs can then build interdepartmental relationships with the broader understanding of the wider business objectives which is a key factor in the success of the role CIOs play in their company.

Set Metrics for Success

While most business leaders are on board to drive innovative change in their company, most CEOs have no way to measure the success of their efforts. CIOs need to set metrics that go beyond KPIs, so CEOs have a way to understand how it all works together across the organization. Without proper metrics to measure the success of innovative digital transformation projects, innovation risks not being implemented further into the company. Employees need to be able to quickly and easily find the value of new innovative tools and techniques in order to justify them, so CIOs need to demonstrate their business benefit.

Engage with All Departments

The IT department might have great ideas to help drive innovation in the business, but other departments also likely have excellent innovative ideas that will benefit the company as a whole. As a CIO, you need to become a broker to help facilitate solutions and build an ecosystem that promotes innovation in every department and makes employees feel welcome to share their innovative ideas. Try working with department leaders to solve a problem they may be experiencing or create a new solution for a task that is being completed with an outdated technique.

It is important to remember that innovation can come from anywhere, so the most important part of driving innovation technology in your company is to promote a culture of innovation and welcome all ideas to innovate the company, no matter how small.

Emily Pribanic | Emily is a graduate of the University of North Texas. She has her B.A. in Advertising with a concentration in Copywriting. Emily has been writing since she was young and has a creative imagination. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her family and two cats.

Emily Pribanic | Emily is a graduate of the University of North Texas. She has her B.A. in Advertising with a concentration in Copywriting. Emily has been writing s...

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