It's About Learning

Majority of CIOs still reject the iPhone, but resistance is weakening | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com via kwout

While it is refreshing to see that IT is slowly catching up with what is happening in the “real world” we need to take a lesson from this story. If you are looking to IT and in particular to your CIO for technological innovation and vision then you may be looking in the wrong place. Yes there are a few CIOs who possess the courage and passion to be visionary but for the most part IT is responsible for making sure that technology is safe and reliable. If the lights are flashing, the fans whirring and the bells ringing then we know the IT and the CIO are doing a good job. Unfortunately, safety and reliability have very little to do with progress and innovation. As much as I wish it wasn’t, innovation – disruptive not the sustaining kind, is messy and occasionally unreliable.

The key here is who does your organization look to for technological innovation. If its is IT and the CIO and you have an IT group that is very traditional then you and your organization may be safe but you are not going anywhere. Innovation requires vision and courage to go places and do things that most are not willing to do.

Perhaps IT and the CIO should not be visionary leaders==perhaps their role is to provide the reliability of a utility. With virtualization, and cloud computing maturing to the point where computing is moving into the realm of a utility it may make more sense to accept the fact that the role of IT is to provide security and reliability and not ask them to be innovative.

If you want innovation and effective change then you have to look to who your innovators are and support them rather than asking groups and people not comfortable with innovation to be something that they are not.