I’m sorry to say that too many CIOs still consider innovation some kind of stand-alone activity that happens in the dark recesses of an R&D laboratory — unrelated to their daily work. Others view innovation as a technology to be deployed. You can almost hear a CIO calling her local services firm and placing an order for innovation; as if it came shrink-wrapped and sitting on a shelf. Wrong again.

The new “everything-as-a-service” paradigm actually should allow CIOs to spend less time focused on the utility aspect of IT and more time leveraging technology to drive innovation.

In any case, innovation isn’t a magic bullet that will solve all of our business ills. Nor is it a product CIOs can purchase and implement. To my mind, enterprise IT innovation can be incremental. It can be about creatively leveraging the tools and processes you have at your disposal to drive business value in new ways.

Incremental Change

A number of years ago, my IT team at the U.S. Tennis Association worked with a partner to add bar code scanning to the tickets at our tournament. This ensured the authenticity of the ticket and helped to reduce scalping of fake tickets. However, it also created an opportunity for an unrelated — and unintended — innovation. Because we have to limit the number of people on our campus during our tournament to comply with public safety issues, ticket scanning allowed us to know in real time how many people were on campus at any given time. In turn, this knowledge created an opportunity to sell additional grounds passes to generate revenue — in the seven-figure range each year. Did we deploy a new technology? No. Instead, we leveraged an existing capability and found an innovative way to drive new revenue.

It also points out that while some innovations do need seed capital --requiring you to cut operating costs to shake free a few dollars-- in most cases, innovation requires less in financial capital and more in human thought equity. You don’t always need a dedicated team to drive innovation; instead, make it the responsibility of everyone who works with you. Turn your people loose and let them come up with creative ideas and solutions. That is the true essence of innovation.

Additionally, innovation requires a favorable corporate culture to be successful. How many of our organizations in the current economic climate are open to trying things that may fail? Yet, in order to create a culture of innovation, you must be open to the reality that a certain percentage of trials or ideas won’t work out as hoped. Is your organization willing to stub its toe or will it penalize people who take educated risks that don’t pan out? How can you help change that culture to motivate innovation?

Successful Failure

A few years back we implemented a set of collaboration tools to support an important volunteer initiative. The technology we implemented, while best-in-class then, wound up not being ready for prime time. However, the experience we gained from this effort, and the new way of working with our clients, allowed us to successfully deploy a SharePoint portal two years later with great success. The initial project was flawed, but it paved the way for future success. How would you and your management perceive that type of effort?

Sometimes innovation is messy. It’s imperative that you view “successful failure” as a welcome option and leverage the lessons learned through this process. Always keep the long-range objective in mind and use your experiences as opportunities to “move the chains” in your drive toward innovation. Taking these steps will help you gain support and buy-in for more business-driven IT innovation to happen.

Larry Bonfante is the CIO of the USTA and the founder of CIO Bench Coach LLC, an executive coaching practice. He publishes a monthly newsletter which can be found here for his latest insights.

Larry also is a member of Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be reached on the site.