Funding for Innovation
how to build a reliable source of funding for IT innovation and IT-enabled business innovation
Speech Abstract
Follow the money! Both innovations in IT and IT-enabled innovations in business (e.g., the "digital business") require funding. But money is generally hard to find. Budgets rarely grow quickly, despite the many tremendous competitive opportunities and pressures. And operational costs continually rise, leaving less and less room for innovative projects.
Most CIOs are pursuing short-term solutions. They put their personal effort into gaining funding for a few high-profile projects. They force the business to adjust priorities within the IT budget to release funds from lower-payoff services. Or they resort to wishful thinking, promising more than they can deliver and exhorting their staff to do more with less.
All these stop-gap approaches have unintended, and undesirable, consequences. And they don't amount to a reliable source of funding for innovation.
The right answer is to fund all good investments, regardless of last year's budget. This may be obvious, but few companies work this way. Why not? It may just be a matter of mechanics — techniques that IT can implement as part of its budgeting and resource-governance processes. This presentation explains a pragmatic way to build reliable sources of funding for innovation.
100-word version....
50-word version....
Outline
- The need for funding for innovation.
- Why it's so difficult.
- Short-term solutions, and why they're unsatisfying.
- The right answer: fund all good investments.
- The mechanics: practical ways to implement reliable sources of funding for innovation.
Internal Market Economics (book)....
