The Most Important Thing CINOs Can Do to Prevent Innovation Silos

The decentralization and fragmentation trend is making headlines for transforming entire industries, but it is also complicating some things for enterprises.

Today, information within large conglomerates is no longer centralized due to the varying technology needs of different sectors within a company.

The result is that each business unit sources and adopts the relevant solution for their own needs without distributing them more broadly.

Beyond complicating the flow of information throughout the enterprise, this causes an array of challenges for enterprises looking to improve innovation technology adoption in the long run.

Chief Innovation Officers can break down virtual silos to combat this innovation disconnect and facilitate communication among the various business units in an enterprise.

Why Fragmentation Occurs

As enterprises expand, whether within their vertical, around the world or to new sectors, new business units are formed that operate entirely independently.

Each new business unit seeks out the solutions and innovations they believe will help them most.

The typical enterprise runs an average of eight different private and public cloud services. Click To Tweet

The different streams of an enterprise become fragmented when a business unit seeks out solutions without exploring the innovative technologies other business units within the enterprise are already using.

As each business unit integrates and adopts a different technology or solution, they create an information silo that reduces the possibility of information being transferred between units, increasing the separation among them.

Consider for example the need for cloud network; every enterprise in the world relies on cloud technology in one way or another.

Instead of purchasing or developing a single cloud solution that will encompass all of the company needs, the typical enterprise runs an average of eight different private and public cloud services.

The Challenges of Fragmentation

When companies use redundant technologies, they increase technology costs due to the need to integrate so many times to new cloud networks.

Fragmentation has caused 58% of enterprise business units to have separate IT and network departments, increasing costs and wasting time performing integrations that could have been avoided.

But the most detrimental impact fragmentation has on an enterprise is the decreased information flow among the various business units.

Fragmentation has caused 58% of enterprise business units to have separate IT and network departments. Click To Tweet

When each business unit has their own ecosystem, they are effectively shut off from the collective group, causing information silos that can damage the company in the long run.

How CINOs Can Reduce Impact

The Chief Innovation Officer is tasked with facilitating information and innovation flow among business units and eliminating information silos.

They do this by ensuring the organizational structure of the enterprise removes barriers to information to flow, collaborating with external software solutions on proof-of-concepts, and encouraging company-wide communication.

The Chief Innovation Officer is tasked with facilitating information and innovation flow among business units and eliminating information silos. Click To Tweet

The most important thing the CINO can do to reduce the negative impact of fragmentation on an enterprise is drive technological adoption among the various business units.

This can be done by routinely reviewing the various innovations and technological tools each business unit uses and understanding the input they provide and the output they get in return.

In doing so, the CINO can get a holistic view of what tools each unit needs and examine if other units can also benefit from it.

The most important thing the CINO can do to reduce the negative impact of fragmentation on an enterprise is drive technological adoption among the various business units. Click To Tweet

CINOs can then encourage visibility of the various solutions each business unit relies on by developing internal portals that facilitate the flow of information.

Ultimately, the CINO needs to be able to drive adoption of innovation across the various units by ensuring that all the collective business units are aware of the tools they have at their disposal that do not require further integration and innovation on the enterprises part.

Breaking Down Silos

Ultimately, enterprises looking to reduce the negative impact of information silos and innovation fragmentation within their ecosystem need to ensure that the company wide culture is designed in a way that facilitates information flow.

While the CINO can encourage innovation adoption and communication between the business units, the cultural change needs to come from the entire management suite.

The good news is that it is never too late for an enterprise to break down communication barriers, share knowledge with everyone, and reduce innovation fragmentation.