01.21.10
Innovation Explosion
[Cartoon]
There have been many books and articles written on how necessity drives innovation. Everyone has read stories of how someone faced with a great challenge was able to overcome the impossible by innovating a new approach. These stories are exciting and motivational.
In the business of technology there are many great stories. We can read about how Google got started when no one wanted to buy their concept. We are amazed at how Amazon transformed to a resource provider rather than just a retailer. We are awed by Apple and their latest products like the iPod and the iPhone.
But, what about little old us, how can we be innovative? We work in large organizations where innovation is the sole right of R&D. No one ever takes suggestions seriously. Besides, the overall business is all too complex to fully understand.
To get little old us involved, many organizations have adopted programs like Six Sigma. In these programs, individual teams that are the closest to the business processes apply proven approaches to evaluate, propose improvements, make the improvements, and monitor the results. These types of approaches are team- driven where each individual on the team contributes.
As great as these programs are, they do not bridge the barrier with IT. Because almost all business processes are totally or partially controlled by IT, successful improvement teams must include members from IT. IT members usually bring diagrams and personal descriptions of automated processes to the improvement meetings. This does help the team’s understanding, although the team is usually not empowered to apply changes to the systems. They are not empowered because they do not have the full understanding of what a change might have on the entire organization.
Here is where the Enterprise Architect becomes valuable. Not as a member of the many improvement teams, but because the Enterprise Architect can provide the holistic view of the organization. Each team would have access to the holistic view. Every improvement team would be able to see the ramifications of changes to the business systems without any input from IT.
This visualization provided by the Enterprise Architect fosters innovation. It fosters an explosion of innovation where everyone would be excited and motivated by making their contribution to their changing organization.
Closing the Business / IT gap
