Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

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> Study

Core Capabilities of ICT


Innovation Management
Empirical Insights

2008/12

www.detecon.com
Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

Table of Contents
1 Management Summary ....................................................................................... 3
2 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Motivation .................................................................................................... 4
2.2 Approach ..................................................................................................... 4
3 Results ................................................................................................................ 5
3.1 Strategy and culture .................................................................................... 6
3.2 Organization and processes...................................................................... 13
3.3 Innovation management success factors and problems ........................... 18
4 Recommendations ............................................................................................ 20
5 The Authors....................................................................................................... 21

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

1 Management Summary

In a highly competitive ICT marketplace, in which 1) industry boundaries blur, mostly driven
by disruptive technology innovations, and 2) the pace of technology and product lifecycles
accelerate, there is a need to differentiate and take advantage of new innovations & techno-
logical trends to optimize product portfolios and operational processes.

This holds especially for industries which use ICT innovations within their product portfolios,
as a specific product or which deploy internal ICT capabilities to reduce operational and pro-
duction costs. ICT innovations therefore have the potential to largely affect product portfolios,
business models and operational costs of various industries deploying ICT in one way or the
other.

However, many companies struggle to efficiently innovate and/or leverage the ICT innova-
tion landscape for their own competitive advantage.

This study is set to analyze the core capabilities of ICT innovation management by interview-
ing executives of companies who are leveraging ICT in their business models, product port-
folios, or operational processes. The status quo is described with regard to 1) strategic and
cultural aspects, 2) innovation processes and organization. It gives an insight as to what
innovation managers believe are the 3) critical success factors and major problems for an
efficient ICT innovation management. Recommendations on core innovation management
capabilities are given based on the survey results and the in-depth interviews undertaken
with 19 organizations and can be summarized as follows:
Q Elaborate clearly the set of critical success factors for ICT innovation manage-
ment within your specific organizational and market environment
Q Be more aggressive in adapting ICT innovations
Q Clearly communicate your innovation strategy to all employees
Q Measure your innovation process more detailed
Q Have a clear linkage between technology and market oriented departments

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

2 Introduction

2.1 Motivation

In the early 80ties information and communication technologies (ICT) became the backbone
of modern enterprises across all industries. With a growing number of technologies CIOs
and CTOs began to create processes and blueprints how to structure, utilize, and foster
these technologies in the enterprise’s everyday life – from business modeling, to product
portfolio management, to operational support.

In the beginning of this millennium – 20 years later – futurists, technologists, and strategists
are arguing about the future of ICT. While one could easily find more different opinions than
bubbles in a fresh pils, we can safely assume a general acknowledgement of two major ef-
fects: A) The boundaries between information and communication technologies seem to
vanish, and B) Product, service, and technology lifecycles and innovation cycles seem to
accelerate.

The question arises how do companies cope with these effects and how do they implement
efficient and sustainable ICT innovation management?

2.2 Approach

The focus of this study is analyzing the status quo of ICT innovation management core ca-
pabilities across companies who are deploying ICT innovations either in their product portfo-
lios as core product component or as part of their internal ICT capabilities supporting their
production processes. A holistic overview is given by considering strategic and cultural as-
pects, innovation processes and organization and gives an insight in the opinion of innova-
tion managers as to what they believe are the critical success factors and major problems of
an efficient innovation management.

The study is structured into the following parts:

ICT innovation
management
core capabilities

Chapter 4: Recommendations

Chapter 3: Results

Success
Strategy Organization
factors
and culture and processes
and problems

Chapter 1: Chapter 2:
Management Summary Motivation and approach

Figure 1: Study Overview

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

The status quo identified is derived from 19 in-depth expert interviews with major innovation
stakeholders (CIOs, innovation managers etc.). Because we wanted to find out how ICT
innovation management is planned and executed across different heterogeneous compa-
nies, we decided to do in-depth interviews of a rather selective group of executives. We set
out to understand similarities and underlying concepts of ICT innovation management
through specific contacts across different industries, geographic locations, and company
sizes.

Companies which participated in the survey are listed below:


Q Allianz Shared Infrastructure Services SE GmbH
Q AT&T Inc.
Q BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH
Q Deutsche Telekom AG
Q Deutsche Telekom AG Laboratories
Q German Insurance Company
Q Hewlett-Packard Company
Q ITERGO Informationstechnologie GmbH
Q Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
Q Microsoft Corporation
Q Ooma Inc.
Q Salesforce.com, Inc.
Q Siemens Healthcare (Siemens AG)
Q Sprint Nextel Corporation
Q Südwestrundfunk
Q T-Systems
Q VeriSign, Inc.
Q Vodafone Group plc
Q Yahoo! Inc.

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3 Results

3.1 Strategy and culture

With regard to strategy and culture the survey concentrated on questions about innovation
focus, linkage of innovation strategy to business goals, communication of innovation strat-
egy, innovation sourcing, and innovation culture and spirit.

Major Findings – Strategy & Culture:

Q ICT innovations that are contributing to efficient production and pro-


cesses as well as to innovative new product portfolios are rated as
business critical by the majority of organizations. However there is a
trend to rate ICT innovations which contribute to internal cost optimizations
through efficient processes and production with a higher criticality than inno-
vations contributing to innovative new product portfolios.
Q The majority of organizations have market driven innovation strategies
with a strong focus on satisfying customer needs with the help of ICT.
Q The customer is rated by a majority of respondents as main trigger to
deploy ICT innovations.
Q Only a minority of organizations rate themselves as first movers in
adapting ICT innovations.
Q Internal innovation capacity is regarded as a must and major competi-
tive advantage.
Q Executive management of the majority of organizations fosters and
supports an innovation culture within the organizations.

1) Innovation focus

For most of the surveyed organizations (81%) business critical ICT innovations are innova-
tions that contribute to efficient production and processes and realize efficiency gains and
cost optimization. This shows a clear trend that organizations mainly leverage ICT innova-
tions to cut cost.

A less significant majority of companies (58%) also see product development and optimiza-
tion through ICT innovations as business critical. They leverage ICT innovations to retain
market shares and increase customer satisfaction via innovative product portfolios or re-
duced price.

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Efficient production 81% 13% 6%

Efficient processes 64% 18% 18%

Product optimization 58% 26% 16%

Product development 58% 16% 26%

Business models 42% 11% 47%

High criticality Medium criticality Low criticality

Figure 2: Which innovation focus fields are regarded as business critical?

47% of the surveyed organizations tend towards pure market driven innovation strategies.
They are focused on satisfying customer needs with the help of ICT innovations. For some
companies “markets” are external customers, for others internal employees or business
units. 21% of the organizations have a combined market and technology driven strategy:
Technology is one of the core components of their innovation strategy, but always assessed
through the eyes of the customer and market. Both factors show the trend towards market
and customer driven innovation strategies.

47% 21% 11% 21%

Market Market Technology No


driven and technology driven answer

Figure 3: Would you rate your innovation strategy as market or technology driven

Looking at the triggers for innovation, we can see an interesting result: While in the previous
question only 47% said that their strategy is market driven, a large majority of organizations
(79%) rate the customer as the main trigger to deploy ICT innovations, followed by competi-
tors (47%) and technology (42%). The subtle difference of these two questions reveals an
important finding: While the majority of companies are triggered by external, “non-technical”
factors, they translate these triggers differently into their strategy.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

While 42% were highly triggered by technologies, the majority of companies translate these
technologies into a level-headed, market driven ICT innovation management strategies.
These technology triggers are not seen as business critical, only attacks on business and
market strategies are.

That also explains why all companies stated that the customer is the main focus of innova-
tion activities: If a direct customer need is satisfied, ICT innovations are more likely to be
seen as successful.

Customer 79% 5%
16%
Competitor 47% 11% 42%
42%

Technology 42% 21% 37%


37%

High trigger Medium trigger Low trigger

Figure 4: What are the main triggers for your innovations?

Only a minority of organizations (37%) rate themselves as being first movers in adapting new
ICT innovations. This effect can be mainly explained by ICT executives being cautious and
cost-oriented in deploying innovations. ICT innovations that fail can produce high costs due
to instabilities or even, after failing, backward migration costs.

37% 26% 26%


26% 11%

Yes Partially No No answer

Figure 5: Would you rate your company as a “first mover” in adopting ICT innovations?

Interview quotation on innovation focus:

“In the past we integrated a lot of products and services – […] but we tried to have no radi-
cal, disruptive innovation to prevent customer churn. We're more involved in integration
than development. “

2) Linkage of innovation strategy to business strategy & goals

Results show that innovation is clearly anchored and stated in business strategy goals for
84% of surveyed organizations. Subsequently, a majority (79%) of surveyed organizations
have a dedicated innovation strategy.

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Low anchorage No dedicated innovation strategy


Medium anchorage
5% 21%
11%

79%
84%
Dedicated innovation strategy
Clearly anchored
Figure 6: Is innovation clearly anchored within your corporate/business strategy?
Does your company have a dedicated innovation strategy?

Naturally, the majority of surveyed organizations (74%) link their innovation strategy to busi-
ness goals. All companies stressed the fact that giving ICT innovation management a focus
and explicit mission to contribute to business goals will foster result-oriented innovation and
prevent innovation expenditures that might lead to interesting ideas and prototypes but with-
out any application or use for the organization. However, innovation experts also value a
“specific level of freedom” within their innovation activities to explore potentially new busi-
ness fields and extend organizations core business via new product portfolios or business
models into other areas. Many companies across industries and geographic location stated
some sort of “managed internal disruption” as one of the main functions of ICT innovation
management.

74% 5% 21%
0%

Yes Partially No No answer

Figure 7: Is your innovation strategy clearly linked to business goals?

Interview quotation on linkage of innovation strategy to business strategy & goals:

“Constant re-inventing our market against competitors requires very flexible and innovative
approaches.”

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

3) Communication of innovation strategy

This finding struck us as interesting but not surprising: A clear communication of the innova-
tion strategy only takes place within a minority of surveyed organizations (42%). While inno-
vation is regarded as major competitive advantage, it is often only communicated to selected
groups that will further investigate and test options and effects on ongoing business.

As not all innovation activities are fruitful there is a call for a need-to-know approach to not
disrupt ongoing business activities and decouple tactical decisions from strategic actions.

42% 26% 11% 21%

Yes Partially No No answer

Figure 8: Is your innovation strategy clearly and transparently communicated?

Interview quotation on communication of innovation strategy:

“We were a little bit secretive – internally and externally. Our business depended on […],
and that comes with a price.”

4) Innovation sourcing

All respondents regard their internal innovation capacity as major competitive advantage and
a must in order to 1) create an innovative brand and image, 2) keep and extend market
shares with innovative product portfolios, and 3) gradually extend business to other business
fields and models. Unsurprisingly all organizations are undertaking internal innovation activi-
ties for sourcing. More surprising was the fact that 95% partner with suppliers. 74% maintain
ongoing cooperations with innovation institutes to drive/ leverage ICT innovations, and al-
most two third of companies (63%) employ specialized external innovation consultants to
support their successful ICT innovation management.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

Internal innovation 100%

Partnering with supplier 95%

Cooperation with innovation institutes 74%

Specialized innovation consultants 63%

Aquisition of start ups 53%

Venture capital approach 21%

Figure 9: What is your innovation sourcing strategy?

Interview quotation on innovation sourcing:

“Outside-in innovation is very important, but we need to find a balance so we don’t disrupt
our core competencies and profit sanctuaries. We need internal process and program
knowledge to do that.”

5) Innovation culture and spirit

In 73% of our surveyed organizations the executive management strongly promotes an inno-
vation culture, and in 58% of the organizations an innovation culture is actively lived. In some
companies executive management is advocating an innovation culture but buy-in of employ-
ees is scarily low. Other companies have no explicit executive management promotion of an
innovation culture but still live and breathe innovation in and out.

These exceptions prove the rule that executive management promotion alone is not suffi-
cient for a successful culture of ICT innovation. It is crucial to choose the right mechanisms
so that the culture is and can be actively lived by the employees.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

73% 16% 11%

Yes Partially No

Figure 10: Does your executive management promote an innovation culture within the organization?

58% 11% 32%

Yes Partially No

Figure 11: Is the innovation culture actively lived by employees?

When it comes to these right mechanisms to foster and promote an innovation culture, our
surveyed experts were astonishingly conservative: rather than following every trendy and
newly hyped method of innovation management or sophisticated toolsets, they were focus-
ing on reliable, proven, and traditional methods and culture, but executing and mastering
these really well. Leading with 84% was group brainstorming, followed by idea management
(79%) and prototypes (58%).

The consensus on traditional methods and tools does not mean an absence of supportive
software solutions or processes, but rather using tools and processes that employees and
executives felt comfortable with, stressing the immediate impact and participation of employ-
ees and their brains.

Many executives agreed that events and conferences can only trigger or inspire a well oiled
innovation machine, while think tanks require a constant “load” to justify operational costs as
well as a strong connection to day-to-day business to reduce the risk of becoming a costly
host for pet projects.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

Brainstorming in groups 84%


Idea management 79%
Prototypes 58%
Dedicated time for innovation 53%
Innovation events 32%
Think Tanks 26%
Developer program 21%
Sponsoring 21%
Conferences 21%
Start-up weekend 11%
Other
5%

Figure 12: By which mechanisms is the innovation culture fostered?

Interview quotation on innovation culture and spirit:

“We’re small enough that we can bounce ideas directly to each other – no need for another
technology sitting in our way.”

3.2 Organization and processes

In order to understand the current status quo regarding organization and processes, we ana-
lyzed companies’ innovation process, innovation organization and innovation measurements.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

Major Findings – Organization and processes:

Q 75% of surveyed organizations have a documented and communicated


innovation process, which is critical to optimally leverage internal innovation
capacities.
Q Most of the organizations have a dedicated innovation department.
Q Only 37% of the surveyed organizations involve the Marketing depart-
ment into the innovation process.
Q The majority of companies try to measure innovation outcomes, common
measurement metrics employed are cost savings, customer satisfaction and
ROI.
Q Measuring innovation KPIs is difficult because of the long-term nature of
innovation activities and the many side-effects.

1) Innovation process

75% of surveyed organizations have a documented and communicated innovation process


which mainly can be classified into the four steps of innovation strategy development, idea
screening, project portfolio management, and innovation realization.

None of the interviewed executives felt comfortable with giving a rule-of-thumb duration of
the process or its steps: some had many different types of ICT innovation departments and
processes, others had a lack of measurement (see also section 3, innovation measurement),
and some didn’t want to disclose confidential information that could allow competitive in-
sights into their product and service releases or lifecycles.

Interview quotation on innovation process:

“My experience over the last 20 years has shown me that most of the processes are either
very very generic – you can basically copy any current innovation management book, re-
gardless of its publishing date – or obsolete within 18 months.“

2) Innovation organization

Most of the organizations (79%) have a dedicated innovation department within their organi-
zation structure. 58% tend towards a tight integration of R&D units or innovation departments
into organizational processes. 52% of organizations prefer a close link between market and
technology oriented departments. While most organizations find it beneficial to have a dedi-
cated innovation department, the later two numbers confirm our observation of a slight am-
bivalence in how to best combine technology and market know how, and how this innovation
department can play a disruptive, but productive role within an organization.

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79% 21%

Yes No

Figure 13: Is there a dedicated innovation department in your company?

58% 16% 21% 5%

Integration Both Separation No answer

Figure 14: What do you think is more important: strong separation of R&D/
innovation units or tight integration of R&D units into organizational processes?

52% 32% 11%


5%

Yes Partially No No answer

Figure 15: Is there a close link between technology and market oriented departments,
units or entities involved in the innovation process?

Focusing on the several departments involved in the ICT innovation process, it can be no-
ticed that for a large majority of organizations (74%) product management and IT/production
play a major role in the process. Also departments that do not directly push innovations like
controlling or purchasing are involved in the process. It is remarkable that marketing depart-
ments are only mentioned by roughly a third of the organizations. Even if the understanding
of what a marketing department is responsible for is different throughout the interviewed
companies, the common understanding is that corporate promotion and advertising, market
and competitive research, as well as internal communications are key functions within every
innovation process.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

Product management 74%

IT / Production 74%

Strategy 68%

Controlling 42%

Marketing 37%

Purchasing 21%

Figure 16: Which departments, units, or entities are involved in the innovation process?

Interview quotation on innovation organization:

“Innovation should always be a step ahead and know what the demand and requirements
will be to deliver the next generation of services and features. We need a tight integration
into day-to-day operations and data models in order to develop efficient products with stra-
tegic value. “

3) Innovation measurement

The majority (79%) of surveyed organizations stated that they measure the outcomes of their
innovation activities. Most of the organizations measure cost savings (63%), customer satis-
faction (58%), ROI (58%) and added revenue (53%). The focus on cost savings realized via
innovations goes along with the focus on realizing efficient production and efficient proc-
esses with the help of innovations.

No

21%

79%

Yes
Figure 17: Do you measure your innovation outcomes?

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

Cost savings 63%

Customer satisfaction 58%

ROI 58%

Added revenue 53%

Time to market 47%

Product sales 42%

Overall market share increase 26%

Overall market size increase 26%

Figure 18: Please list the measurement metrics employed to measure your innovation outcomes?

While this sounds obvious in theory, all organizations stressed the problem of measuring
KPIs of the innovation process, and more so innovation success. Innovation processes have
not yet reached full maturity across all organizations in the ICT industry. Many organizations
have just introduced a dedicated and documented innovation process. Therefore some com-
panies are just beginning to analyze the average number of steps and the average duration
of their processes. Measurement of the outcome of this innovation process with the depicted
KPIs is difficult because there are many interdependencies to other influencing factors like
exchange rates, general economy development, product and service pricing, or competitor
offerings. Furthermore the success of innovation activities can often only be measured years
after the innovation project was actually conducted.

The lesson learned is that not only each industry, geographic location, or organization size
requires a different approach for measuring KPIs, but actually each and every company will
need a tailored and customized design that aligns processes with actual measurable values.
Further on, this alignment and design has to be constantly revised and tweaked to reflect
current operational proceedings as well as shifts in corporate strategy and goals.

Interview quotation on innovation measurement:

“We mainly focus on effectiveness, less on efficiency, as innovation process efficiency is


hard to measure and depends on too many other external and internal factors.“

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

3.3 Innovation management success factors and problems

In order to evaluate the most common innovation management success factors and major
problems the interviewed executives had to rate a set of given methods and problem areas.
Additionally company specific best practices or critical issues could be mentioned during the
survey.

Major Findings – Innovation management success factors and problems:

Innovation management success factors which are rated very critical by the
majority of organizations (52%):
Q Innovation clearly anchored within business strategy
Q An innovation culture which is promoted and fostered by executive manage-
ment
Q Innovation management tightly linked to product life cycle management
Innovation management problem areas rated as very critical are only seen
by a minority of organizations, amongst them are:
Q Linkage and contribution of innovation activities and outcomes to business
goals (21%)
Q Promotion of an innovation culture by the executive management (16%)
Q A dedicated budget for innovation management activities (16%), and
Q Participation of the customer in idea development (e.g. lead user innovation)
(16%)
· ICT Innovation Management is very diverse and has no clear industry and
organization independent best practice approach

It was astonishing to see that the answers to this question show an ambiguity in critical suc-
cess factors that comes from organizational and industry specific differences in ICT innova-
tion requirements and setups. Each of these different approaches has their own pitfalls, so it
seems.

Slightly more than half of the companies (53%) find that the most critical success factors are
to anchor innovation clearly within the business strategy; to have an innovation culture that is
fostered by the executive management; to tightly link innovation management to product life
cycle management. Similar, slightly less than half of the organizations (47%) agree that a
dedicated budget for innovation projects; innovation activities which are linked to business
goals; customer centric innovation management orientation; the valuation of failed innovation
projects are critical success factors. Both in-market-testing for new products as well as
measuring and tracking innovation activities don’t stray far away with 42% of the interviews
executives citing them as business critical.

Having such an even distribution of nine success factors shows the diversity in best prac-
tices for successful ICT innovation management and of course the complexity of it: there is
no single ingredient for success, and success or failure do depend on many more input vari-
ables than only the execution of ICT innovation management.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

None of the interviewed executives could name us any major or even critical problems within
their organizations. However, we did get a few pointers to critical issues, which were almost
as even distributed as the above stated success factors.

Some companies (21%) struggle with linking innovation activities to business goals. The
reasons mentioned were current change in industry, general economic downturn, and stra-
tegic realignment due to repositioning or recent merger. The same reasons were mentioned
again for the runner ups of fostering the innovation culture by the executive management; a
lacking dedicated budget for innovation activities; the participation of the customer in idea
development (16% each). All these problems are not unknown to many other companies.

Innovation clearly anchored 53%


5%
Culture fostered by management 53%
16%
Inno. linked with product life cycle mngt. 53%

Dedicated budget for innovation projects 47%


16%
Inno. activities according to business goals 47%
21%
Customer centric innovation management 47%
11%
Valuation of failed innovation projects 47%
5%
In market testing for new products 42%
11%
Measuring / tracking innovation activities 42%

Idea screening / project selection 32%

Part. of customers in idea development 32%


16%
Communication of successful innovations 32%
5%
Coop. of prod. and techn. departments 26%

Clearly communicated 21%


11%
End-to-end process responsibility 11%

Parallelized process steps 5%

Success factors [% of Problem areas [% of


respondents rated very high] respondents rated very high]

Figure 19: What, in general, are the critical success factors and major problem
areas for efficient innovation management?

Interview quotation on innovation management success factors and problems:

“Set your goal for time, resources, budget based on business requirements. If you exceed
any of these three things, make a quick check against your original assumptions, but if you
exceed them and you don’t have the required results – kill the project, and please: stop
whining what could’ve/ should’ve/would’ve. “

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

4 Recommendations

As a result of the conducted survey several conclusions and recommendations can be de-
rived. These recommendations can help to identify optimization potential for more efficient
ICT innovation management within organizations.

Q Elaborate clearly the set of critical success factors for ICT innovation
management within your specific organizational and market environment.
An in-depth analysis of specific innovation requirements within organizations
and their respective market environment enables companies to identify specific
ICT innovation management success factors. From these success factors spe-
cific ICT innovation management best practices for optimizing innovation activi-
ties can be derived and introduced.
Q Be more aggressive in adapting ICT innovations.
A more aggressive approach in adapting ICT innovations could enable organi-
zations to derive more value creating potential out of their ICT products and
processes. So far the focus on ICT innovation management is mainly cost
driven so that the value creating potential of ICT innovations is neglected to
some extend. This recommendation holds especially for companies where ICT
is “only” supporting the production process and is not the core product.
Q Clearly communicate your innovation strategy to all employees.
A clear communication of the innovation strategy to all employees within an or-
ganization empowers them to get more involved in the innovation process and
to increase the innovative potential of the company.
Q Measure your innovation process more detailed.
Measuring the innovation process (duration, steps, outcomes) more detailed
makes innovation initiatives more transparent and enables organizations to
more precisely steer and control innovation activities.
Q Have a clear linkage between technology and market oriented depart-
ments.
Market and technology oriented departments should more interact and jointly
work on innovation initiatives. This would assure that market and technology
oriented innovation needs are aligned with each others.

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Core Capabilities of ICT Innovation Management

5 The Authors

Frank Weiß is a Consultant with Detecon, Munich. Following his studies in business and
computer science and after working for Accenture, he joined Detecon in 2007. As a part of
the Strategic Technology group he gathered knowledge and experience on several projects
in the field of new ICT technologies and ICT Innovation Management.

He can be reached at +49 151 14700161or [email protected]

Thorsten Claus is Managing Consultant at Detecon, San Francisco. With over 14 years of
ICT industry experience he leads Detecon’s Playout Intelligence group. He is also US head
of Detecon’s International Center of Excellence for New Media, creating strategies, business
models, and service offerings around mobile and fixed video. Prior to joining Detecon he
held positions as Senior Technology Strategist at T-Systems North America as well as CTO
of Cosynus GmbH, where he created and implemented fixed-mobile unified messaging solu-
tions for international large and medium enterprises.

Thorsten holds a Master’s Degree in Information Technology and can be reached at


+1 415 904 7925 or [email protected]

Dirk Pracht is Managing Consultant and head of the group Strategic Technology at Detecon
in Bonn. The focus of his work is on strategic technology and innovation management in the
ICT and telecommunication industries where he combines technological competence with
strategic and commercial experience. Prior to joining Detecon he worked as a Senior Con-
sultant at Capgemini with a focus on Business Information Strategies.

Dirk studied computer science in Karlsruhe (Germany) and holds an international executive
MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management.

He can be reached at +49 160 8957837 or [email protected].

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