CIO Survey 2011
Most CEOs are looking to IT to help drive business success through timely information provision and innovation. CEOs (like many of us) are experiencing the now ubiquitous nature of technology, from using their own personal Smartphone through to posting updates to social networks, and many are becoming increasingly enthusiastic about the possibilities of technology.
However, for some CIOs and technology executives with less strategic influence, more constraints are felt and the perception shifts towards IT as an internal commodity. CIOs are more conservative about IT than CEOs. They know that IT has high business importance but are less convinced of its ability to create new value, perhaps held back by (among other things) their focus on delivering legacy services to customers internal to their organisation. The challenge for CIOs is to grasp the opportunity to help their businesses realise their CEOs' visions.
Innovation and opportunity really do depend on your point of view. In the graph below we compared the responses for how Innovative or Utility orientated the CIO felt their organisation's use of technology was. As you can see there was significant disparity across the industry sectors.
One point of view this survey has great insight on is, of course, the CIO. We asked global CIOs to rate their IT function's perception on a scale of one to six, where one represented High Innovation ("IT provides innovative services fundamental to organisational competitiveness") and six reflected High Utility ("IT provides utility services, internally focused to the organisation"). Clearly most IT functions have a combination of both, but by preventing the CIO from being able to choose a neutral rating our scale forced the CIO to make a judgement on if their IT function leaned more towards Innovation or Utility. As you can see in the accompanying graph the results produced a fascinating picture that allows us to compare the CIO perception of IT on an industry to industry basis.
The most 'Utilitarian' industries are Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing. Engineering, for instance had 22% of participants feeling their department was perceived as Innovative, leaving the vast majority (78%) feeling it perceived as Utility focused.
Public Sector & Government and - perhaps more surprisingly - Pharmaceuticals and Advertising share this Utility approach.
At the 'Innovation' end of the scale CIOs from City Markets, Retail, Financial Services, Information Technology and Transport & Logistics rate IT as more innovative and particularly fundamental to business competitiveness.
However the story is more complex than this.
For example, whilst the Financial Services industry has a greater proportion of Innovative IT departments than the Information Technology industry, the latter has a greater proportion of departments where that Innovation is of the highest importance.
Of course there are no real rights or wrongs about where IT should be; some industries are more inclined to innovation than others and some benefit from disruptive powers of technology more than others. It must also be said that being in a Utilitarian industry can make the case for technology innovation quite compelling. A CIO in the construction industry for example who embraces technology innovation will clearly stand out from crowd. Conversely, being in an Innovation industry can make your hard efforts on innovation look quite 'normal' as you spend time and money simply keeping up with the pace of change.
Another factor is the point of the observer. CEOs tend to see IT as having greater innovation potential than CIOs. CIOs who report to CEOs tend to see IT as having greater innovation potential than CIOs who don't.
The key is to take an appropriate response. Innovation is very often in the eye of the beholder
