Put The R Back Into R&D: Why IT Needs Foresight

If you got into IT for a stable career where you could just learn a skill, apply that same skill for 40 years and then retire, sorry. You should not have been looking to IT for that.

Career growth? Yes. Lots of opportunities? Yes. Constant learning and evolution? Also yes. In fact, there once was a role called the VP of electricity—that’s who the CIO used to be.

IT leaders are constantly pressured to upskill, reskill and stay on top of emerging trends, which is why I think IT is the perfect home for a corporate strategic foresight function.

A strategic foresight function, or team, is a dedicated unit that scans the horizon for emerging technologies and relates trends to the various organizational strategies on an ongoing basis. Foresight teams can engage stakeholders through facilitated workshops and ongoing roundtable discussions in-between “research sprints,” where the unit will run through a process of uncovering relevant use cases and insights.

It’s basically a research team focused on exploring and reporting on trends to internal audiences. Here’s why your IT organization needs one.

“Long-term planning is dead” or “long live long-term planning”?

Strategic planning is in need of balance. There has been a shift from three- to five-year midterm roadmaps, where let’s face it, years four and five are a wash, if you’re lucky.

One- to two-year planning ranges have become popular, as they offer a more tactical outlook, but they often lack a longer-term vision.

Neither approach offers much in the way of flexibility, and often, they are both thrown out the window in favor of emergent needs. A foresight team can maintain a rolling set of planning scenarios that can be used as triggers for contingent initiatives: “If X occurs, we launch Y initiative.”

IT needs content to engage business stakeholders with.

So you got a seat at the table. Now what? Will you be discussing what got you there? Because that may or may not be of interest (hint: probably not).

For whatever structure you’ve been forming to drive your transformation or modernization (or whatever buzzword you prefer), consider how a program of relevant internal content could keep a productive and insightful discussion ongoing.

Many organizations feature a social/news media monitoring and public environment analysis function that reports into external communications and issues management. The business technology environment is changing so rapidly that I’d argue it deserves similar treatment.

Build capabilities and retain your innovators.

Many IT units have tried their hand at “capital I” innovation but have been subordinated into “IT process only” innovation. While for some, that’s a logical starting point, it won’t keep your brightest stimulated for long.

Getting ahead of the next tech trend helps ensure your group gets to participate. There’s an “eat what you kill” mentality in business. It’s time for IT to venture out further in order to get access to new opportunities. If the organization is going to apply cutting-edge data science to build a new product, being the one who pitches that idea gets you first dibs.

When it comes to representing the “ROI for innovation,” I would offer that your highest potential employees will leave if they don’t get access to cutting-edge opportunities. There are hard dollars associated with the replacement of IT staff, and they are higher for key roles. The avoidance of attrition can be used to support a business case for innovation in IT.

Put the R back into R&D.

There has been an ongoing debate over centralizing innovation versus nurturing pockets of innovation. These are not mutually exclusive options. A central foresight team mainly synthesizes and reports on trends and facilitates the visioning aspects of strategy; it does not monopolize the innovation mandate.

The biggest risk with any centralized operating model is accidentally creating a classist structure in an organization—where the needs and ideas of the few supersede those of the many. The dynamic of having one group labeled as the “cool ones” (innovation) while the rest are the “others” (maintenance and operations) is to be avoided at all costs.

The key to avoiding this is decentralizing the scanning function within a foresight team. The concept of a “suggestion box” has been posited before—many organizations have them, but few use them. They fail typically because of barriers to submitting an idea, lack of follow-through or lack of recognition.

Another important risk is creating an ivory tower that is disconnected from the practicalities of the enterprise. This often happens in foresight/trends work, and it takes consistent effort to counteract.

Here are some suggestions to help you implement in the face of these risks.

1. Make scanning as low-friction as possible—think bookmarking to a shared folder. Easy peasy.

2. Provide opportunities for “scanners” to contribute and/or provide visible recognition.

3. Align the foresight unit with your digital product group(s) and focus your search along with current or future product roadmaps.

These steps should help ensure your research efforts are both inclusive and connected to some practical utility for the enterprise.

May your next competitive advantage come from IT. Good luck and happy hunting.

[ This article originally appeared on Forbes.com - Link ]