Innovation is the latest buzz word. No question about it. But it is not just a buzz word any more. Organization started doing something about innovation. Innovation is easily misunderstood within the information technology organization. The moment, IT organization hear the word innovation, the immediate thing, generally, comes to the most of the IT organization members are

• Server virtualization
• Latest search engine (and introducing latest google appliance)
• Introducing SOA tool sets
• Latest content management
• etc

The above could be few innovative IT solution for some organization, but the innovation in the ITM (Information Technology Management) team should not be limited to just technological innovation. In the current and future generation of the ITM, the value proposition of ITM is not just providing the service to support the business, but to drive business providing innovative solution using information technology. Some organization are already there and few late starters have already started discussing the design of that organization model.

Innovation is integral to information technology organization. To promote innovation in ITM, the understanding of core business process should be significantly increased. Enterprise architect could play pivotal role to improve the understanding of core business processes by

• Providing technology & process road map to the ITM organization and elevate the understanding of the ITM strategic direction
• Providing multiple level of core business processes to the ITM organization and improve the understanding of the complete business life cycle of the organization. In simple words, provide the necessary information to the organization on how the company make money? Who are all the customers, how the company create value to the customer?
• Articulation of business strategy to the organization
• Assisting the organization to validate new ideas by performing quick proof of concept
• Application portfolio assessment. Categorizing the current spend and revenue generated by business

Enterprise architect builds a foundation and platform in the organization to drive innovation by providing the basic necessary information so that the organization will come out of their daily function and start thinking about out side the box solution. The innovation in return will drive efficiency, cost optimization and better customer value proposition.