Are your executives asking the tough questions?

With dozens of books on the subject of innovation, and growing pressure from CEOs to see more of it from their IT organizations, one expert asks: do people really get the "so what" factor?  Mateen Greenway, an EDS Fellow based in London, and chief architect for the EDS EMEA Manufacturing Industry Affinity Group, believes that many C-level execs miss the point of innovation. He explains that innovation is not about just coming up with clever ideas. "Creativity is about coming up with the idea, innovation is about applying the idea to obtain value," or about "bringing creative ideas to life." He has come up with a set of principles to determine whether your company has an innovative culture. To start, you have to ask yourself some tough questions like:

• Do you really know what business you are in, and what you are trying to achieve in the future?
• Do you understand where the value in your company comes from, and can you articulate what you want to achieve through innovation?

In terms of who innovates, "Innovation teams mix together many disciplines and this requires the participation of people who are pre-disposed to inter-disciplinary working. Often these people have degrees and experience in many different subjects, cultures and disciplines and have worked in different specializations," he writes in CIOUpdate. He also adds that innovators are made, not born--meaning there's hope for all of us.

For the information on innovation:
- read the article in CIOUpdate