7 barriers to innovation worth breaking

CIO Ed Giaquinto took to heart a lesson he learned on the job a decade ago. A former engineer at big-box retailer Toys R Us, he and his co-workers would spend weekends upgrading inventory management and logistic systems at distribution centers, working on servers that required the distribution centers to come offline. [ Learn the…

CIOs grapple with how to jumpstart innovation amid pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has spurred a proliferation of rapid-fire transformations, with IT leaders working through punch lists of priorities aimed at preserving business continuity. But with work from home (WFH) decrees eliminating workplace tête-à-têtes, CIOs are wondering what will happen to serendipitous innovation. As much as CIOs like to boast about IT staff productivity since…

Maximizing stakeholder value

In biology, an ecosystem is a system of biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) elements coexisting in equilibrium. If some elements increase, others decrease to keep the overall energy of the system at some nominal level. For example, plant-eating animals multiplying in an ecosystem will deplete the vegetation, thereby reducing the capacity of that ecosystem to…

AI gives IT an edge in improving customer experience

Even prior to the pandemic, improving customer experience was becoming a major priority for IT. COVID-19 and the resulting shift in business models have only accelerated that strategic directive. Delivering a positive customer experience is even more important now, as businesses prepare for a post-pandemic world that will still involve lots of home-based workers, rising…