As CIO, you need to ensure that your company's strategic plan focuses on creating digital awareness, forming digital innovation teams, and developing digital opportunities, as shown in the "digital innovation collaboration model" below.
Why is this important Here are three reasons:
IT organizations can lead this initiative if done strategically. Using the digital innovation collaboration strategy, IT organizations can develop a collaborative process that enables teams to work together more effectively to develop new and improved products and services that create unique customer experiences. Today, companies have to view the entire ecosystem, across the entire value chain to achieve such innovation. The digital innovation collaboration model provides the ability to look at processes from a unique perspective and develop three main competencies.
First, the CIO and IT leadership team must create digital awareness across the enterprise. This involves understanding how disruptive technologies change the way we shop, interact and behave. IT organizations can facilitate this by sponsoring a "digital symposium" for the executive team, where thought leaders with real-world experience share the challenges and opportunities involved in leveraging disruptive technologies in innovative ways. Executives need to understand how technology creates real business impact, fosters innovation, and enables the ability to effectively store and share information across the enterprise. Following are some examples:
Second, with help from C-suite colleagues, CIOs can take the lead on organizing digital innovation teams. This is where personnel across the enterprise, regardless of role, are re-skilled to enable the implementation of information and technology that creates customer value in new and unprecedented ways. That means everyone must think differently. The marketplace has changed, industries have changed, and buying habits have changed. Following are some examples:
The third leg is to identify digital opportunities across the value chain. This involves digital innovation teams creating new products and services at intersect points where new and unique customer value can be created. To accomplish this, digital innovation teams need to be process-centric, identify value opportunities, and use outside-inside thinking. The following examples are explored in detail in my book, The Strategic CIO: Changing the Dynamics of the Business Enterprise.
I'm sure your company has implemented some degree of a digital innovation collaboration strategy. But how effective is it To find out, you need to measure two dimensions. The first is the degree of business value your strategy provides to the enterprise for each of the three competencies. The second dimension is the breadth of the footprint implemented across the business for each of the three competencies. This is depicted in the graphic below.
I've developed a digital collaboration assessment that can help you measure your strategic maturity by capturing best practices for each of the three competencies and underlying components. The assessment enables you to score the degree of maturity in your organization for each best practice. The scoring can then be plotted on the grid. You can then analyze the results and develop a plan to improve the maturity of your enterprise digital collaboration initiative.To obtain a copy of the assessment, contact me at pweinzimer@gmail.com.
In today's digital economy, every company must develop and implement a digital collaboration strategy. I've attempted to articulate a plan that executive teams can utilize to develop new and innovative products and services that create unique customer value, improve margins, and enhance shareholder wealth. Please contact me with any comments or suggestions. I look forward to hearing from you.