Contents

1. When is the last time that you had an innovative thought?
2. 3 x CIO inexpensive tools to get your prototypes and ideas built and developed and sold from within
3. 1 x CIO Interview on Strategy and Innovation
4. 2 x Chief Business Information Officer Must Reads
5. 5 CIOs share their methods of generating innovative strategic ideas 6/20 9-10AM EST

I have been reading a great book recently called Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Stephen Kotler. In one of the stories Laird Hamilton who is a famous big wave surfer is about to ride into the biggest wave ever ridden on a surf board remembers people yelling at him not to go, not to go, but he let go of the tow rope and released into the wave. He remembers. “it was like I had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other as I thought about what I should do next……eventually the angel won and I stayed on, and that’s the only way I made it.”

You are also surfing big waves in your life and as a CIO you are handling big challenges all the time.

As the CBIO – Chief Business Information Officer, do you generate your own ideas to solve business problems? What is your routine to incorporate idea generation into your business? Are you depending on ‘group think’ for ideas or ‘brain storming’?

I think in today’s economy we need to rediscover our own capacity to develop our own ideas. Brain storming has it’s place, but I think new generation of ideas happens more effectively within oneself. One of the ways I have learned to create ideas as an entrepreneur and as a CIO engaged to help companies is with notebooks in which I write note, pictures, diagrams and ideas. Every day I have to generate 10 new ideas before I go to bed….or I don’t go to bed. This keeps my idea generating muscle strong and vibrant. Here is a video that show you how I do this.

What challenges does your business have that you think you are not qualified to solve? What business problems do you KNOW that you are qualified to solve but haven’t? When is the last time you have had an innovative thought?” If you write 10 ideas per day down on a piece of paper at the end of a year you will have 3500 new ideas. Some will be fresh and new and have tons of value. Others will be bad. The point is that you have made it important to create ideas.

I love this quote from Einstein that comes to the core of creativity and innovation:

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.”

As a Chief Business Information Officer you are in charge of- Innovative Thinking.

Here are 3 tools to get your prototypes and ideas built and developed and sold from within after you have ideas.

What is the pace of your Intra-preneurship in your company? You can be an internal Entrepreneur. I call this being an Intra-preneur. If you work for a company that moves at the pace of a glacier you have a couple of options. I highlighted these in a recent conversation with a CIO friend of mine who works for an association that is largely dues driven. Their revenue is largely obtained by billing their members each year for membership. The conundrum is that they already dominate 93% of the available market. Is there a market opportunity when you dominate 93% of it? There is not much of one, and as a result, they are looking for revenue sources outside their normal revenue stream.

My CIO friend has been at this company for about a year now and has a ‘seat’ at the metaphorical table. He is super smart and has ideas of how to apply Big Analytics to his business. His business recognizes that they are at an inflection point with increasing costs related to HR and health care so they had hired a company to help them be entrepreneurial. He is not against the glacial speed of the consulting effort but I have a sense he could get some tangible actionable real results now while the business moves through the bigger evaluation process.

I suggested that he get some small amount of entrepreneurial funding and create a prototype of what he wants. I told him to explore getting a cheap data base person and developer from Russia, China, or Pakistan using Elance or odesk. He can get analytics help from Mechanical Turk. This can all happen now.

You can participate at a level of that brings respect and admiration from ‘do-ers’ within the organization by getting something launched. By the time the organization has spent allot of money on the turtle analysis of revenue options you could have 2 or 3 working models to show existing customers and staff for less than $2,000.

CBIO Must Read

Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Stephen Kotler

Here is a great little read that may inspire you more in regards to being a catalyst for revenue in your company called Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. When you have ideas you can get them built inexpensively and try several out at one time.