On Wednesday September 19th I hosted a really great live webcast in Chicago on Consumerization of IT, BYOD, and Employee Led Innovation. My two panelists, Steve Duncan from Trend Micro and Ron Hyde from Dell, and I had a fun round-table discussion on the issues facing organizations of all sizes. If you didn’t get a chance to watch the live webcast, don’t fret, you can watch the recorded version here.
You can also still participate in a Tweet Chat happening tomorrow Wednesday September 26th at 26, 2012 at 12PM CDT (1PM ET, 10AM PT) with host Ramon Ray (@RamonRay). The topic will be “Debunking 4 myths in consumerization of IT. More details can be found here.
I fielded several questions from the twitter and blogasphere before the live webcast. To close the loop on Q & A here are the questions and the responses. Thanks to all who participated!
1. How should companies think beyond the app (or the device) when developing Employee Led Innovation (ELI?) What is the role of the employee in ELI beyond the insatiable appetite for cool devices?
Steve Duncan: Companies have to take a holistic approach to ELI and not just create policies and technology frameworks for devices. It starts with creating a structured and continuous method for collecting ideas/initiatives and reacting to them. Every initiative needs to be answered by management such that employees remain motivated to participate. Some times that means identifying the right people to evaluate the merits of every idea or initiative. Once employees know that Management and IT are really listening and reacting, the initiatives will flow.
2. How do you establish and maintain a collaborative attitude between IT and the rest of the company?
Steve Duncan: It’s the job of IT to create the environment that allows employees to innovate. That starts with developing and publishing boundaries for how technology can be used inside and outside of the company. It has to be backed up by providing a technology environment that lets employees to choose their applications and devices without risking loss of company data or breeching security. By providing security and provisioning support for employee initiatives, an environment of collaboration would be established.
Ron Hyde responds to both questions:
One way to ensure success would be to establish an ELI committee, made up of both end-users and IT staff. Ideally, this committee would be the ‘voice of the company’. This purpose of this group would be to jointly collaborate on key corporate initiatives around mobility. The committee will consist of IT savvy end-users who are familiar with the mobile devices and software applications of the ELI. The IT department would provide folks that are focused on delivering and managing these mobile devices and apps. Together the end-users would outline objectives and the IT department could prepare for them. By working together, both sides can craft timelines, develop a budget, and muster resources. This would help set expectations on both sides. Ultimately the committee would introduce solutions that provide value to the corporate end-user and be effectively managed by IT.
