Mar 13 2008
Dr. Guido Sacchi (CIO CompuCredit) Lays Out Roadmap for ‘Disciplined Innovation’
The CIO of CompuCredit gave a compelling talk this week on how to drive ‘disciplined innovation’ at the annual Computerworld Premier 100 conference in Orlando, FL. Dr. Guido Sacchi was honored at the conference as one of the top 100 CIOs in the country and is one of those CIOs that could easily be a COO or CEO in any company. He has that unusual ‘right brain - left brain’ combination that is powerful stuff in a business leader. According to Dr. Sacchi, ‘disciplined innovation’ is characterized by companies that have a high degree of execution skill, along with a high attitude for risk - another unusual combination of (corporate) skill sets. In his lively talk he spoke about the challenges that many CIOs face today: governance, too many ideas with too little execution and long cycle times; all of which tend to mire innovation in the mud of good intentions.
At CompuCredit they’ve solved these problems with leadership, focused execution of innovative new ideas and leveraging visualization as a strategy to dramatically reduce cycle times. CompuCredit has established an ‘innovation council’ made up of senior executives and other people in the company. They’ve also launched an ‘Idea Factory;’an internal Website that gives employees a platform to voice new ideas.
Using iRise to visualize applications during rapid, iterative and collaborative definition phases allows CompuCredit to “fail cheaply and fail fast,” according to Dr. Sacchi. And visualization is allowing the company to create “iPod equivalents;” applications that are so intuitive they require no training nor user manuals. Dr. Sacchi noted that iRise is also helping the IT organization drive higher quality applications to market faster, along with giving the company sourcing options that would not otherwise be available.
If you’re interested in learning more about CompuCredit’s approach, watch this video of Dr. Sacchi speaking at the iRise user conference in October.
What are some of the unique things your organization is doing to drive innovation? Any additional tips you can share?