A couple weeks back there was a lively discussion on the EDUCAUSE CIO listserv about whether the CIO is or should be the Chief Innovation Officer? This topic came up last week at Learning Impact - and our higher education leadership panel made the point that key to innovation in institutions are two things:
1. It should be perceived as everyone's job, goal, etc.
2. The governance structures about how to lead and foster innovation should be clear
A study was cited by Mark Stiles of JISC that indicated that when executives were not clear about how IT governance occurred in their organizations, it had significant ramifications on the performance of the organization (see What Makes for Good IT Governance).
Today, by pure chance, EDUCAUSE released a podcast interview I did at EDUCAUSE 2011, where I discussed how interoperability standards can play an important role in helping CIO's set up a foundation for Innovation, and thus being an innovation leader, versus what many are really focused on today: integration.
Listen to the EDUCAUSE podcast interview with Rob Abel of 1EdTech here.