January 30, 2012

M.S. Krishnan, Joseph Handleman Professor of Information Systems and Innovation and Professor of Business IT of the Ross School of Business

23 minutes

Among other topics, M.S. discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

* How the average CIO is not yet considered an innovator because of the lack of pedigree in the organization, IT is often not nurtured the way other functions are, and the CIO if often preoccupied with day-to-day operations

* The way in which CIOs can foster innovation by engaging and being more collaborative with business partners on business issues, establishing familiarity with the business model and sharpening their business acumen

* How creating a culture of innovation involves taking on experiments and creating space to take risks, supported with a governance process that assesses the success and lessons learned and treats innovation iteratively like a marathon taken in 400 meter sprints

* The importance of recruiting individuals who are passionate and curious about the intersection of business and technology, while providing staff with a sense of urgency through exposure to the competitive pressures of the marketplace

* The danger of creating a single group solely responsible for innovation, leaving others in the organization to rely on the selected few to think of all of the opportunities and challenges in the company

* Eye on the trends: Cloud based architecture and systems providing the “democratization of capabilities” for small and medium- sized businesses, and the organization’s ability to understand the talent they have through the lens of the ecosystem in which they operate

M.S. Krishnan’s Biography

M.S. is the Joseph Handleman Professor of Information Systems and Innovation and Professor of Business Information Technology at the Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan. He is also the Faculty Director for India Initiatives at the Ross School of Business. He has co-authored the book “The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value with Global Networks” co-authored by the late Professor C. K. Prahalad. The Economist and BusinessWeek magazine named this book as one of the Best Books on Innovation in 2008.

His research interest includes Business Innovation, Corporate IT Strategy, Business Value of IT investments, Metrics and Measures for Business Process and Software Quality, Productivity and Customer satisfaction. In January 2000, American Society for Quality (ASQ) selected him as one of the 21 voices of quality for the twenty first century. In 2004, he was selected as one of the top thinkers on Business Technology by Optimize Magazine based on their reader surveys. His articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Information Week, Sloan Management Review, among many others. M.S. consults to companies such as Ford Motor Company, NCR, IBM, and Nestle.

M.S. received his degrees in Mathematics and Computer Applications from the University of Delhi, India and Ph.D. in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was awarded the ICIS Best Dissertation Prize for his Doctoral Thesis on “Cost and Quality Considerations in Software Product Management”.

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