Chief Innovation Officer: Job with a future

Questionable or confusing job titles have always caused many laughter in company canvases. A short online search has already brought countless hits, including curiosities like the senior information advisor (formerly also called librarian), the water sports assistant (Bademeister) or the director ideation (advertising buyer) Code>

Central features of a CINO


Until a few years ago, the "Chief Innovation Officer" would probably have been included in this list of the odd job titles. But global competition, tense budgets and the flood of new technologies have already led innovation management for companies into a vital area. But who is responsible, at the top of the enterprise, for innovation through infrastructure and processes and for every opportunity to speed up progress?


Innovative Crowdsourcing


Typically, CEOs are responsible for the overall direction and strategy of organizations that manage CIOs to manage IT and information management and the CFOs' costs and budgets. Innovations are emerging in all these individual areas and therefore, in large or highly diversified companies, someone needs to strategically manage this innovative transformation process throughout the company. Someone who enjoys the confidence of the CEO and can activate the entire workforce.


The rise of the CINO


The core task of CINO is to constantly promote innovation. He is responsible for identifying areas where technology, structures and everyday practice can be better combined, optimized, or even re-invented to achieve company goals. The CINO must be strategically bright and capable of operating both tactically and strategically in the long term. He must believe in the benefits of innovation, but without restricting himself as a creative, innovative thinker to specific areas. Its central task is to create an environment in which the innovative company heads can achieve the best performance. The modern CINO knows the company "out of the way", knows how things are done best and who can best implement them. But he also has an inkling of the hidden talents and ideas that must be given to daylight.


The ability to combine personal employee skills, technical knowledge and company-specific know-how in the best possible way never occurs automatically. For this reason, more and more companies install so-called innovation managers.


CINOs can tackle exactly the problems that so many companies are currently facing. A central task would be the successful introduction of cooperation. Most companies still remain in the top-down principle, with "old" executives and young employees working towards the top, such structures are not innovation-friendly. Altering this "old school" corporate culture and eliminating prejudice against horizontal collaboration are major challenges, but they can be mastered in a variety of ways.


New collaborative solutions enable innovative crowdsourcing, which draws maximum success from the creative ideas of the workforce. The CINOs have various instruments at their disposal, which promote great commitment and good results. This includes, on the one hand, a good work environment, for example, by means of intelligent office planning, which includes, for example, meeting rooms, where employees are happy to work with each other in a relaxed manner. However, enterprise-wide innovations can also be promoted virtually through good collaboration software, such as Mindjet SpigitEngage.


With this platform, companies can optimize their processes for the development of new products and services and integrate employees, customers and partners into the innovation process. SpigitEngage uses crowdsourcing, gaming components and big-data analytics to identify and ultimately implement ideas with development potential. With Spigit-Engage, innovation projects can be designed in a kind of competition. This motivation motivates, creates transparency, and by the way, ideas or approaches that advance the company are created. The benefits are obvious: employees' involvement is promoted, the generation of ideas and workflows are improved and the sustainability of innovation processes is increased.


The increasing importance of CINO can also be shown by figures: A new study concludes that 43 percent of large companies in the US have already hired an innovation manager. In 2011, this was the case at only 33 percent. In view of the intense competition in which companies are operating and the resulting pressure to innovate in process optimization or product development, it is unlikely that the Chief Innovation Officer will be on the list of the most ridiculous job titles in the future.