Fonts of innovation: Mobile development in the business is an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by Symantec. It explores how the IT function is working with the rest of the organisation to deliver mobile innovation.
Delivering mobile innovation
IT departments find themselves under enormous pressure to deliver innovative mobile services for the business and its customers, all the while ensuring a secure environment. And the IT professionals are finding that they are not the only source of new ideas for mobile innovation—other parts of the business are increasingly active innovators in this regard.
This report, supported by a survey of 280 executives in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, seeks to ascertain how organisations are going about delivering mobile innovation.
According to this report the IT department is held to be the main initiator within the organisation of ideas to improve employees' mobile working. When it comes to using mobile technology to improve interaction with customers, however, sales and marketing emerge as the main sources of ideas.
A hopeful sign is that IT departments appear much less isolated within organisations than previously. Around one-third of survey respondents say that the IT function is “extremely collaborative” in developing mobile services, while only 13% thought this was the case two years ago.
Amid all the evidence of tension between IT and the business, there is a clear recognition from all quarters that delivering genuine mobile innovation requires the active collaboration of both IT and non-IT staff. As one of the interviewees argues, the onus is on IT to make such co-operation happen.
