CIOs look for innovation in many places

This week's InformationWeek conference was kicked off with a look at where CIOs are investing and what they're investing in. One of this year's takeaway points: There's no single path to innovation. The editors asked companies to consider 21 technology initiatives, which include WiFi deployment, CRM implementation, and legacy apps replacement. None of the selections were overwhelmingly picked. In other words, no single technology received over 50 percent of the vote. The selection that got closest was network bandwidth, which was considered effective by 47 percent of the InformationWeek 500 companies. The next two choices were deploying business intelligence tools and new types of collaboration software. When it comes to whom the CIO should report to, answered varied: 46 percent say to the CEO or president, 24 percent say the CFO and 13 percent say the COO. In terms of  offshore outsourcing, well, let's just say it's gone mainstream: 66 percent said that they're outsourcing to offshore locations, versus 43 percent in 2004.

For all the details on the conference:
- read the article in InformationWeek