Is Your IT Dept Inhibiting Enterprise Innovation?

When talking about the transition from Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0, it seems as if the bulk of innovation is coming from different individual and group levels within the business, not the IT dept. The IT dept of today is primarily focused on governing business resources, but they must leave room for creating innovation especially with the ongoing growing trend of Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 applications. While researching the topic, I came across a pertinent blog written by Oscar berg highlighting this phenomenon. He brings up an interesting point:

“Business people that (rightly or not) were collectively perceived as computer illiterates by the IT people now sometimes are one or even two steps ahead of the IT department when it comes to seeing and acting on how modern information technologies can help to support and innovate the business. Business innovation with IT comes more often from trial and error and ad hoc adoption of new technologies and new ways of working by individuals on the business side.”

Business individuals must effectively collaborate with the IT dept in order to close the gap that currently exists between IT systems and how the businesses needs to be designed and operated. The IT dept must be able to react quicker to business changes, and only then will it be able to stay only one step behind the business, not two steps or more. It’s only a matter of time before IT engineers start to play catch with the industry giants.