Innovate to impress the boss

Chief information officers (CIOs) must sometimes feel that the word chief in their title is a bit of a misnomer.

Experts seem to agree that IT leaders are less responsible for technology leadership than they might be.

Take Andy Mulholland, global chief technology officer at Capgemini, who tells me he spends less time talking to CIOs these days, and more time talking with board members. What has he learnt during such conversations?

Mulholland says the market is changing, as executives become ever-mindful of how much a system will cost and what the return on investment will be.

Such pressures mean IT leaders looking to impress the boss and assert the chief in their CIO title cannot operate in a 'business as usual' sense. Fundamentally, CIOs – and the company at large - need to:

• Have a successful business model – and know how to grasp opportunities to make the most of intellectual property
• They also need to understand where to innovate in their company. Moreover, IT leaders should look at how they might apply external innovation to the existing business model

Mulholland says such external innovations might take place in three ways: to charge more for the product; to increase market share; to change the cost of undertaking production.