Corporate IT is stifling innovation

“Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds”

- Zig Ziglar quotes (American motivational Speaker and Author)

This seems the perfect quote, bitter as it is, to describe my encounters with the gatekeepers of technology in American Corporations - Corporate IT staff. I've waited to write about this phenomenon for more than a year since my company was sold - not wanting to simply be squeezing sour grapes. But the time has come - enough time has passed - that I air this grievance. I don't expect it will make any difference - other than to get it off my chest - but here goes.

The gatekeepers, and stiflers of innovation reside within the IT offices of American Corporations. Entrusted with protecting the security of what is, to most senior executives, a dizzying array of technological assets within the Corporation - IT has invented and nurtured internal FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) within their companies as a shield against outside solutions. IT has become lazy, insular, and resistant to innovations which could save millions of dollars for their company - and in the process has harmed shareholder value more than any other single group within Corporate America. It is shameful.

Valuable innovations have been shunned for no good reason. But in the end, innovations have been resisted simply because fear is easy to create. This fear is a shroud that hides the real problem: Laziness. Corporate IT has not been held accountable, has been given free reign to "protect the security of the company", and as a result has become fat, and lazy, costing untold billions of dollars in shareholder value. It has to end.

If IT is the problem, strong senior IT executives are the solution. We must build an environment where change is embraced, even rewarded. Where risk is encouraged - managed, but encouraged. The only way to reward this behavior is to set incentives properly. Those who take no risks must not be rewarded. Incremental change is not enough.

A massive technological shift has happened in the last decade - with stunning economies being achieved through the innovative use of web technologies - but most of these economies have never penetrated Corporate IT. For proof, simply look at the plummeting cost of creating a start-up and the persistent legacy problem in Corporate IT. Why have many of these economies never reached Corporate IT? Fear is easier than risk. IT asks for funding to build the solution, doesn't get it (after all innovation is expensive, and often not best done internally), so IT throws up it's hands and manages the legacy, ad infinitum. Third-party solutions abound at a fraction of the cost, but often are not embraced. It's easier to simply take a paycheck, manage the legacy, and wait for retirement. Shameful.

If you were a CEO, obsessed with shareholder value (which remember is really just shorthand for increased revenue, and decreased cost) and I told you that with the insertion of a software application into your business process, a reduction of 30% in the cost of customer care could be achieved? Now remember, customer care is often the largest single expense item in a Corporate budget - accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual cost for almost all Fortune 500 companies. If you were this CXO what would you say? "How" is what you'd say. So I'd tell you, and let's say that you're convinced. What do you do next? You call in Corporate IT - who understands your technical environments - and ask them to get this going. If you've ever sold entreprise software, you know what happens next.

Nothing.

FUD, and then nothing. The CXO who's sponsoring this initiative comes back into the room, and asks what's the problem? The answer - 'Er, um, well, this solution is 'not how we do it', or is 'too risky', and the blanket indictment - i't's an ASP, and all ASP's are too risky'. Or my favorite,  'it's insecure because it lives outside our firewall'. Firewall has become a catch-all innoculation term that IT uses to wield off innovation. Firewall - it's such a perfect word. Without a firewall, what would happen? Well, the business would burn down right? A fire would start? Seems simple enough. Shameful.

In 6 years, and literally hundreds of sales presentations with American Corporations, I can't tell you how often this scenario has played itself out. I know many entrepreneurs who have solutions to sell to Corporate IT, who find this same problem. They don't speak out for the same reason I didn't. Criticizing the king, the gatekeeper, is likely to get you beheaded, or at least barred from entry. But this king has no clothes. It's shameful, wasteful, expensive, counter-productive, and it needs to stop.

Are you guilty of doing this?