Helen Pukszta

To regard the business as a customer -- the customer -- of the IT department is a sensible practice, with one exception: handling the strategic aspects of information technology requires an approach and attitude beyond what is generally recognized in IT as serving the needs of the business.

The role of business-IT innovation is to ensure that an organization is effective in identifying, responding to, and pursuing strategy-consistent uses of IT. Business-IT innovation, however, does not begin or end with IT strategic planning. Instead, it should be treated as a business activity that overlaps strategic planning yet is handled and managed independent of it.

That businesses want IT investments to be firmly rooted in business strategy is a given. And there is plentiful advice available on how to align investments with strategies. But what new IT investments to consider? How are the potential investments identified and validated?

Business IT innovation has been around ever since computers entered businesses. However, this important business activity generally lacks formal definition in organizations and is often assumed to take place somewhere deep within the confines of the IT organization.

Organizations striving to excel at exploiting information technology need to adopt a new IT mindset. Why is a new mindset necessary? As others have noted before, by changing how we look at the world, we can change the world itself.