Innovation has been the talk of the town and I have been asked several times on what CIOs/CTOs need to do in order to create a positive impact on their business model and what is the challenge that awaits them.

According to me, innovation should take advantage of new markets and new ways of selling to these markets. It could take advantage of even completely different services that the Web environment produces today. I must say that if you make products, most of the people already know how to make huge money by selling these products.

Look at car manufacturers in Europe or America. They don’t make money by selling cars. Where they do make money is on the services offered like finance packages or servicing of car parts.

The challenge for an innovative business model is based on several changes in technology. One of them is the huge global presence of computer literate consumers. Look how users of the Internet have changed their buying patterns. If they want to buy an expensive item, they conduct a thorough research on the Web for the item even though they may not buy it from the Web.

This changes the role of technology in most businesses. Please notice that I have been talking about technology and not IT and there is a clear reason for this differentiation.

When we talk about IT and the IT department, the model that we have in mind is based on the idea of “help me administrate business processes at lower costs.” It is more data-centric.

CIOs/CTOs should realise how to use new technologies in order to capture people, events, processes and ideas and finally optimise them.

I see CTOs becoming more popular because their focus is primarily on using technology as an engine of change. On the other hand, CIOs have traditionally looked at how the operations are run on the cost model. So there is a different thought process here.

Without innovation, there is no future for business. The whole business is about changing markets and globalisation. With growth of the Internet, there is a universal network in place. Everybody is connected. I would call this a mesh and everybody knows how to exploit this mesh. They do it individually through blogging etc. But what the enterprises need to learn and do is to manipulate this mesh to suit their own advantage.

Innovation is not for a moment; it is a role where the CTO becomes the promoter of technology usage for innovation not only through the IT line but also work with the business line.