
Due to greater competition, tightened budgets and new technology, the importance assigned to innovation as a legitimate and vital business process has been elevated in recent years. But who at the top is responsible for ensuring the infrastructure and procedures are in place to help foster innovation and ensure the company is using every avenue to maximise progress?
Traditionally, CEOs are responsible for business direction and strategy, CIOs for IT and information management and CFOs for cost management and budgeting. Within business departments, incremental innovation is common but in large or diverse organisations, someone is needed to manage the transformational strategic innovation that straddles the entire business, who has buy-in from the CEO and can galvanise the whole workforce. This is where there’s an opportunity in the C-suite for an executive who links the traditional CEO, CFO and CIO roles. Step forward the CINO. Rather than an “executive without portfolio,” the CINO is seen as key to an organisation’s future success. Dr. Jane Snowdon provides a great real-life example as IBM’s first appointed Federal Chief Innovation Officer in May last year.CINO’s key characteristics
The CINO’s key role is to constantly ‘bang the drum’ for innovation, being responsible for identifying and proposing areas where technology, company structure and day-to-day practices can be combined and refined to drive a business towards its corporate goals.Crowdsourcing innovation
Collaboration allows companies to begin crowdsourcing innovation, ensuring a business maximises the value it gets from its workforce’s creativity. There are several tactics CINOs can use to guarantee participation and results.The rise of the CINO
A recent survey showed that 43 per cent of large companies have a formally accountable innovation executive in place, up from 33 per cent in 2011. CINOs even have their own website! With corporate competition intensifying in the post-recession era, and innovation increasingly sort after to stay ahead, it is highly unlikely we’ll be seeing Chief Innovation Officer appearing on ‘ridiculous job title’ lists anytime soon. Harvey Wade is a director at Mindjet. Image sourceShare this story