With the US presidential election race entering the two-month sprint to election day, I think it is useful to speculate on what a Romney administration would mean for the US tech market (in another blog post, I analyze how a second Obama Administration would affect the tech market -- see "What An Obama Reelection Would Mean For the US Tech Market Outlook.")

To start, we should remember that US elections don’t have much of an effect on tech spending and purchases. Businesses and governments make tech buying decisions based on their own needs and funding resources, which elections affect only around the margins. I don’t expect this election to diverge from this historic pattern. Still, marginal tech decisions can mean the difference between a tech market that grows by 3% to 4% or one that grows at rates of 5% to 6%.

To the surprise of no one, Apple today announced its new iPhone 5. Given that the iPhone 5 is unlikely to solve the European debt crisis or bring peace to the Middle East, it won’t be surprising if we hear a resounding "meh" from Apple's critics, with them dinging the company for a paucity of innovation. Indeed, competitors like HTC and Nokia have already offered some of the features that Apple highlighted today, such as those for imaging. But Apple still outpaces the competition when it comes to the entire package — the new iPhone unites significant improvements in industrial design, imaging, audio, and connectivity, along with the wealth of new capabilities that iOS6 enables. Apple will sell a boatload of iPhones — especially now that both Verizon Wireless and Sprint will have an iPhone (the 8 GB iPhone 4) for consumers' favorite price: free.

But make no mistake, this is not about the iPhone 5 versus the Samsung Galaxy S III or the iPad versus the Kindle Fire HD; this is about customers' attachment to the larger ecosystems that those devices inhabit. Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft all aim to translate customers' investments — of money, information, personalization, and social connections — into a gravitational field of loyalty so powerful that few customers will ever attain escape velocity. This market is still taking shape, but the iPhone 5 will markedly increase Apple's pull, already the strongest out there. 

In a recent media interview I was asked about whether the requirements for data visualization had changed. The questions were focused around whether users are still satisfied with dashboards, graphs and charts or do they have new needs, demands and expectations.

Arguably, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were probably the first real "commercial" examples of data visualization (though many people before the Egyptians also used the same approach — but more often as a general communications tool). Since then, visualization of data has certainly always been both a popular and important topic. For example, Florence Nightingale changed the course of healthcare with a single compelling polar area chart on the causes of death during the Crimean War. 

In looking at this question of how and why data visualization might be changing, I identified at least 5 major triggers. Namely:

• Increasing volumes of data. It's no surprise that we now have to process much larger volumes of data. But this also impacts the ways we need to represent it. The volume of data stimulates new forms of visualization tools. While not all of these tools are new (strictly speaking), they have at least begun to find a much broader audience as we find the need to communicate much more information much more rapidly. Time walling and infographics are just two approaches that are not necessarily all that new but they have attracted much greater usage as a direct result of the increasing volume of data.

 "Innovate or die" is not just a catchy slogan. It’s the way that businesses need to operate in this market-driven world. And, as technology underpins more and more products, services, processes, and go-to-market strategies, the CIO must be involved in driving business-impacting innovations. This involvement ranges from supporting internal R&D to unearthing and vetting new technologies out in the market that can be internalized to disrupt the status quo and propel the organization forward.

Most organizations are cognizant of this reality. However, few have mastered making innovation into a sustainable practice with defined processes that take into account the differences between incremental change and true innovation. What is needed is less hyperbole and more practical information and examples of how to the CIO can and should support an innovation process to drive business value.

To deliver, you’ll need to understand and internalize the trends, understand the business capabilities required to deliver on sustainable innovation, and assess how prepared you actually are to deliver. Based on this insight, you then need to plot out a strategy and carefully plan your people, process, and technology. From there you have implement — building out your innovation network, and developing a governance model to enforce the right behaviors. And to continually improve, you need to focus on metrics, peer comparison, and change management.