Читать книгу Fostering Innovation. How to Build an Amazing IT Team онлайн

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In most companies, especially large ones, a return on investment (ROI) calculation is performed before a project is undertaken. Risks are documented, and contingency plans are drawn up. A project is treated as an investment, and a solid return on the money is expected. Sure, there are consequences for failure: When a project fails, people lose their credibility, their funding, and sometimes even their jobs. However, if you want to be an innovator, you must take calculated risks. When you're able to consider a failed project a valuable learning experience, you have developed an innovator's mindset.

Companies don't innovate; people do. For innovation to work, the company must create a nurturing environment. Sticking a group of people in a room and telling them to innovate is no better than putting a seed on a concrete floor and telling it to grow.

What if you took your best and brightest people away from their day jobs and had them focus 100% on innovation? To even approach this discussion, you must have an extremely reliable infrastructure, a well-managed IT budget, and a steady stream of value creation. In other words, before a CIO can ask the CEO to allocate people and money for a high-risk venture, things better be operating smoothly. On the other hand, if you can only spare the new person and a few interns, your innovation will fizzle. When you're overly reliant on a guy named Brent⁷ to keep your systems running, there's no chance he can be assigned to an innovation project.