Leadership & Business: The Emerging Role of the New CIO

Interesting Innovations

Street Heat:
Ever burn your foot walking on hot asphalt in the summer? That’s because black absorbs heat—while white reflects it. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, modern cities are covered in the black stuff. Dutch construction firm Ooms is now heading its headquarters by running water pipes under the street. Some of them collect heat in the summer and run deep into the ground where they heat water via a heat exchanger. That heated water is stored for winter—a sort of battery, if you will. In fact to take it a step further, the water is returned to the ground after heating the building, by passing under the street again. The residual heat in the water, now only a few degrees above freezing, melts any snow or ice on the road surface. The water is then stored—used cold to cool the building—before being run under the asphalt again to prepare for winter. Brilliant!

The Emerging Role of the New CIO

Search Amazon.com on the word “innovation” and more than 180,000 books come back. Search Time magazine and you get nearly 3,000 results. There’s no doubt innovation is a hot topic. Other evidence comes in the form of the many surveys that have been done by IBM, McKinsey, Deloitte, etc. In one survey by Boston Consulting Group, 81% of CEOs listed innovation as one of their top three priorities.

So what’s being done about it? How are CEOs satisfying the demand they’ve created by jumping on the innovation band wagon and telling their boards and CEOs that they’re focused on innovation? They’re doing what they’ve always done. They’re delegating. How do I know? Just look at the number of companies that have created the new position of CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) in recent years. It’s a trend that’s all too familiar. Back in the 70s and 80s it was the CFO—a response to the increasing financial complexity of business. In the 90s it was the first generation of CIO (the Chief Information Officers) followed by the CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Five years ago, in response to the Enron debacle, it was the CRO (Chief Risk Officer)—and in some cases, another CEO (Chief Ethics Officer). Well, today it’s the Chief Innovation Officer.

So what does a Chief Innovation Officer do? That’s a great question. In a BusinessWeek book review this week, Michael Arndt, without realizing it, alludes to the problem that most CIOs don’t know what to do—at least not yet. He comments on a new book from the Harvard Business School Press by two BCG consultants. The books is titled, Payback, by James P. Andrew and Harold L. Sirken, Arndt points out, all too well, that what the book lacks are the “how-to” instructions needed to successfully build innovation into a business plan. Once again we have high-level fluff. The gist of the book—you need to ensure your innovation efforts are profitable—is just too simplistic and is simply a restatement of countless books of yesteryear put in the context of innovation instead of re-engineering, mergers and acquisitions, or any other “new” effort to improve business. Which business improvement efforts don’t require a measurable payback?

I run into a lot of CIOs these days. They don’t all explicitly have that title—they might be VPs of R&D, SVPs of Corporate Strategy, or Directors of Sales, Marketing and Innovation—but they all have the same objectives. They’ve been tasked—delegated to by their CEO—with figuring out how to drive innovation in their company. After all, the CEOs must keep their promises to their board and shareholders. Most of them are doing a lot of reading, attending conferences, and possibly reading an occasional blog. And most of them are as confused and lost as ever, because of books like Payback.

That’s why I’ve set out to help them, by creating a program that actually teaches them how to do their job. We start with simple things, like writing a job description for themselves. And then we set to the task of actually teaching them how to execute on each element of that job description.

It’s a pretty simple concept, but one that seems long overdue.

February 23, 2007 in Books, Business, Chief Innovation Officer, CIO, Current Affairs, Executive Education, Innovation, Innovation Tools, Leadership, Management, strategy | Permalink