The New Technology Role to Drive Innovation

Having spent my entire career in technology oriented roles, both in traditional IT and in front line business management, I have witnessed firsthand a very interesting shift taking place within larger companies.   The race to implement digital strategies and advanced technology across all functions of a business has caused a blending of roles deep within the organizational chart.   A technology role convergence has formed where the lines between the established IT group and traditional business functions have blurred.   A new tech savvy and business minded role has emerged on both sides that thrives in this middle ground, and it will be a key driver of innovation in the future.  Companies competing in the digital age need to understand this new role and find the right partnership model to enable this transformation.

What is the Technology Role Convergence?

Two quick examples highlight how the technology role convergence might materialize within an organization:

• A tech savvy business manager realizes how a cloud solution could reduce operating costs or increase revenues, and they can now engage directly with easily accessible software vendors.
• An entrepreneurial IT leader discovers a new revenue stream opportunity through a mobile channel, and starts a skunk works project as a proof of concept.

In each case, we have traditional roles stepping across boundaries to deliver value using technology.  They are motivated to find tangible business benefits and comfortable engaging with high tech concepts. More importantly, they have a strong desire to engage with all aspects of the initiative and not hand it off to the team that has the established authority.  Concepts like “shadow IT” and “consumerization of IT” were leading indicators of this evolved state, and the idea that IT needs to align with the business has lost relevance.  Technology has become the business strategy for this group.

A Paradigm Shift for Innovation

Many factors have contributed to this shift in perspective, but two compelling causes stand out.  First, the growing technical competency of professionals at large combined with much easier access to vendors has enabled the business leader to cross over into the historical IT space.   On the other side, years of IT embedding more into their business functions to align, preserve relevance, and recommend valuable projects has created business minded technology leaders.  The result is a converged role that cares more about overall business value than following old territorial norms and rules.

I began researching this phenomenon when I experienced this change in my own career.  Many articles and books focus on the need for CIO’s to drive more business alignment and stay relevant during a changing landscape.  While I agree with that concept, the situation has evolved and needs a larger paradigm shift.   We should view this instead from a business value perspective and expand the discussion across the organization.   Finding new ways to compete and add value using technology is an overall business challenge, and it transcends the need to justify traditional models.

The CIO that understands this transformation can certainly embrace a new model and remove barriers at a high level.   However, without a healthy partnership forming deeper within the organization to enable these new roles, valuable projects may move too slowly or omit necessary controls.  Companies need to innovate faster and do it in a secure and controlled way, and the technology role convergence offers a great opportunity to accomplish this goal.

A New Partnership Model

So what do we do with this new role and how do we best enable it for success?  The response in some companies has been to block this shift and force people to stay in traditional silos.   Shadow IT and hidden projects emerged as a result since this group could not be contained.  Instead, I recommend that we create a new partnership model between the IT and business functions that promotes faster idea advancement and exploits this new role.

Each function contributes valuable components to this new model.   We know the focus of IT and the CIO needs to change, but they are still critical partners to provide security, quality controls, and deeper technical expertise especially with integration.   Business managers add operational, market, and customer domain knowledge that is also necessary for success, but we need leaders in these areas to have a mature understanding of technology process and risks.  When these teams work against each other it causes delays, frustration, and less secure solutions.   We need to find an optimized partnership model that strikes the right balance and avoids this trap.

Does the technology role convergence develop as a newly defined collaboration between these groups, or do we create explicit innovation teams staffed by these roles instead?  I believe many options could work with the right structure and talent, and I plan to continue exploring this model in the Business Technology Partner blog.   Through shared perspectives on this topic and discussion from a diverse community, my goal is to find the best way to optimize this partnership model using these emerging roles.

McKinsey and Company recently wrote that the rapid pace of technology innovation is forcing executives to make decisions and commit resources quickly to compete with competitors.   I submit that companies already have talent internally who understand how technology can improve and even disrupt their businesses.   They are pushing the envelope in this new converged role, and executives would be smart to embrace this group now.

Let’s start the discussion, what do you think?