Guido Sacchi, Chief Information Officer and Senior VP, Corporate Strategies for CompuCredit closed the main conference today with his discussion of disciplined innovation, which he defines as companies that have both a high discipline in execution and a high attitude for risk. This has been the key to CompuCredit’s success-innovative business thinking and rapid technology deployment.

Listen to Guido’s entire presentation at the iRise conference (Time: 35 minutes).

First step said Sacchi was to change the business user’s viewpoint of seeing the corporate IT department as a big expensive black box. His feeling was if this problem is based on process, what can his company do about it? Get into the mind of customers, understanding what they do rather what you get back from surveys. He puts the iPod up as the goal. It’s an ideally designed tool that is so loved by customers and there’s no need for instructions. Can your software design reach that level?

Question is does your company have a high threshold for risk? Look at who’s promoted within your organization, said Sacchi. Are those that are promoted the risk takers and innovators? Can they execute on it? If you have low discipline and execution, you’ll only be an idea factory which Sacchi admits was an earlier stage for CompuCredit. The ideal situation is disciplined innovation, the ability to have both high discipline in execution and high attitude for risk.

Don’t fall into the trap of too many ideas, too little execution. Execution can become a scarce commodity.