Leading Technology-Based Innovation

Being a leader in technology-based innovation could be considered a requirement of today's corporation. Being ahead of the technology curve could provide a significant source of competitive advantage, while falling too far behind can be devastating and often crippling to companies, both young and mature. The methods, procedures, and protocols are important to consider before establishing how the company is to proceed with how technological innovation will be handled within the firm.

First, it is important to recognize that there are several parties affected by technology changes and should not discount the importance of ensuring that technological change will not disrupt current business operations during their implementation. Some technology implementations are rather mundane and will not affect customers, employees, or organizational structure in any significant manner, however, others can be quite cumbersome to involved parties. 

More efficient business processes, more powerful and/or sophisticated application and software production techniques, evolving risk management protocols and requirements, legal requirements, are just a few of the myriad of potential reasons for a firm to have a strategy for handling technology innovations across the company (McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A., 2012). There are several methods a company may take to develop and implement said strategy with several considerations that must be accounted for to ensure they choose the most effective strategy for their firm.

Technology requirements of the customer as well as the business can vary significantly across industries, and the level of competition is a strong determinant in how many resources will go into business process and technological innovations in a firm, and how the company will handle those innovations. The more competitive and reliant on technology an industry is, the more aggressive stance they must take on business and technological innovation in order to keep up to the status quo of the industry. However, it is important to note that many industries, such as in the area of banking, finance, and even agriculture, have become increasingly reliant on various types of technologies to remain competitive. An increased reliance on technologies only goes to validate the reasoning to have a well thought out strategy, including processes, protocols, and resources dedicated for handling technological innovation.

Another strong determining factor of how aggressive the strategy chosen to handle business and process changes is how much the changes will affect current business processes, functions, and the organizational structure  (McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A., 2012). Drastic changes in technologies, such as when telecommunications companies make improvements to their bandwidth and data transfer technologies, require a significant amount of restructuring to the organizational structure, and could be very costly in the form of employee training, potential severance contracts, potential litigation from employees, and of course the resources to implement the new technologies while maintaining current technologies. On the other hand, a change to an application's interface or design would have very little impact on the organization and current operations.

Keeping up to speed with the direction technology is headed within your industry and those surrounding it should be of the utmost priority to a CIO, and recognized by senior executives for its importance and potential impact if not managed properly. A failure to act on the changes occurring in the marketplace can leave a firm at a significant disadvantage and could spend a significant amount of resources trying to catch up to the status quo of the industry and competition.

Austin, R. D., Nolan, R. L., & O'Donnell, S. (2009). The adventures of an IT leader. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A. (2012). IT strategy: Issues and practices. Boston: Prentice Hall.