This week I participated in a small group discussion with business and IT leaders who are focused on innovation. It was an interesting discussion that touched on these topics:

• The scope of innovation. Yes, innovation is on everyone’s minds, in business publications and is the hot topic du jour. However, what exactly is innovation? What is the scope of innovation? Is it at the product or customer experience level, the business model level, the business process level, or at the departmental level? When talking about innovation, it’s critical to identify what level within the organization or the addressable market you are focused on and the scope of your desired innovation. That helps determine the sponsors and participants, the skill sets required, the change management approach, the timeline, and many other critical components of the engagement.
• Sustainability. One of the biggest problems in innovation is sustainability — maintaining momentum over time. Often a senior executive comes in, shakes things up, gets people to buy into innovation, and then moves on in a couple of years. If leaders up and down the organization haven’t fully embraced the innovation efforts as their own, the effort gets orphaned and dies when the executive champion and thought leader leaves.
• The industry sector. Most participants in the discussion felt that innovation almost always happens at the industry level — that industry expertise trumps technology expertise when coming up with strategic, game-changing ideas. They also thought that cross-training innovation leaders in IT if they are industry experts (and vice versa) is crucial. This means that CIOs may face a high hurdle when trying to get the business technology organization plugged into innovation initiatives.