Proliferative innovation is a challenge to enterprise CIOs to look to the future rather than focus on small increments of the existing legacy environment. If the current wave of technology proliferation continues to accelerate, we can expect that overly control-oriented CIOs and IT departments will be swamped, and will fall further and further behind the wave of business expectations.

The enterprise IT agenda for the first decade of the new century was all about “fewer moving parts” and “less is more.” The next decade will be all about “more is more,” with users in the driving seat. The problem is that consumers are also connected employees, and proliferative innovation is at odds with the ICT management agendas of most large enterprises.

Decision-making around the pace of technology transformation is usually driven by inside-out thinking – reviewing the existing internal technology environment and deciding how best to take it to its next phase of evolution.
In the context of a large enterprise this frequently involves fewer-moving-parts strategies aimed at reducing complexity and solving specific operational or financial problems by rationalizing, consolidating, and standardizing infrastructure and applications.

CIOs will need to get with the proliferative innovation game and the five key strategies discussed in the attached. One of the biggest challenges for enterprise IT strategy is deciding how fast to evolve. “Too slow” leads to outdated technologies, missed opportunities for innovation, and frustrated users. “Too fast” leads to excessive costs, failed adventures, dead-end technologies, and unmanageable risks.

We recommend that CIOs start to question the practicality of rigid architectures and tightly controlled standard operating environments in areas where enabling innovation is more important to the enterprise than controlling costs and risks.

We challenge you to at least consider a "cloud first" policy in 2012! If nothing else it will get you to think "outside-in".

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