CIOs - Innovate now! or become irrelevant
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Tue, Dec 21, 2010
MIT Sloan recently released the results of a CIO survey completed over the summer; the study found the number one imperative of CIOs at Fortune 500 companies is innovating to create competing differentiation. That's their number one priority. Now, consider the CIO magazine statistic that suggests the average tenure for a CIO is just 22 months. Why do you suppose it's so short?
Those two statistics, and I love stats, when taken together lead to one unequivocal conclusion - innovate fast or lose your job and maybe lose your company.
The data suggest that unless you, as a CIO, can envision an innovative process, project or imperative, sell that to your CEO and Board, and begin showing rapid impact then you betterare start putting a resume together.
Innovations can be done rapidly with tremendous benefit. I've touted Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN) EpicMix in blogs this year but many of you don't know the whole story - they called ODIN in February. Their CIO asked us to prove RFID could get 99.9% read rates in the tough conditions of a ski area. When we did, they moved quickly to roll out what is the most innovative social media application this year combining RFID with Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Start to finish we rolled out hundreds of RFID read points, across thousands of miles and did it in just six months. EasyEdge ran the entire infrastrcuture. The Vail team were all-stars. they were commmitted to the project and did the heavylifting (literally) putting up gantry's electric and doing it in tough to reach places.
That kind of speed was facilitated because an award-winning CIO knew he had to innovate to keep a competitive advantage. The pay off? Vail's stock has increased 50% since we started the install.
So what does this have to do with ODIN and RFID? RFID can be at the cornerstone of innovation. Thinking of a way to deploy RFID in your business can be a way to not only secure your job but create leadership position in your industry, and if you are in healthcare maybe even save lives.
Coming into 2011 think about the ways you may be able to use RFID in your company, for increased visibility, reduced inventory, better consumer experience, more accurate treatment protocol, or creating a breakthrough game or training exercise. Then when you go to deploy RFID remember the key is physics, and getting 99.9% read rate.