APO04

(Manage Innovation)

Process Description

Maintain an awareness of information technology and related service trends, identify innovation opportunities, and plan how to benefit from innovation in relation to business needs. Analyze what opportunities for business innovation or improvement can be created by emerging technologies, services or IT-enabled business innovation, as well as through existing established technologies and by business and IT process innovation. Influence strategic planning and enterprise architecture decisions.

Process Purpose Statement

Achieve competitive advantage, business innovation, and improved operational effectiveness and efficiency by exploiting information technology developments.

IT RELATED GOALS

05 Realized benefits from IT-enabled investments and services portfolio

08 Adequate use of applications, information and technology solutions

09 IT agility

11 Optimization of IT assets, resources and capabilities

17 Knowledge, expertise and initiatives for business innovation

PROCESS GOALS

1. Enterprise value is created through the qualification and staging of the most appropriate advances and innovations in technology, IT methods and solutions.

Increase in market share or competitiveness due to innovations
Enterprise stakeholder perceptions and feedback on IT innovation

2. Enterprise objectives are met with improved quality benefits and/or reduced cost as a result of the identification and implementation of innovative solutions.

Percent of implemented initiatives that realize the envisioned benefits
Percent of implemented initiatives with a clear linkage to an enterprise objective

3. Innovation is promoted and enabled and forms part of the enterprise culture.

Inclusion of innovation or emerging technology-related objectives in performance goals for relevant staff
Stakeholder feedback and surveys

RACI CHART

APO04.01 Create an environment conducive to innovation.

Create an environment that is conducive to innovation, considering issues such as culture, reward, collaboration, technology forums, and mechanisms to promote and capture employee ideas.

Create an innovation plan that includes risk appetite, the envisioned budget to spend on innovation initiatives, and innovation objectives.
Provide infrastructure that can be an enabler for innovation, such as collaboration tools for enhancing work between geographic locations and divisions.
Create an environment that is conducive to innovation by maintaining relevant HR initiatives, such as innovation recognition and reward programmes, appropriate job rotation, and discretionary time for experimentation.
Maintain a programme enabling staff to submit innovation ideas and create an appropriate decision-making structure to assess and take these ideas forward.
Encourage innovation ideas from customers, suppliers and business partners.

APO04.02 Maintain an understanding of the enterprise environment.

Work with relevant stakeholders to understand their challenges. Maintain an adequate understanding of enterprise strategy and the competitive environment or other constraints so that opportunities enabled by new technologies can be identified.

Maintain an understanding of the business drivers, enterprise strategy, industry drivers, enterprise operations and other issues so that the potential value-add of technologies or IT innovation can be identified.
Conduct regular meetings with business units, divisions and/or other stakeholder entities to understand current business problems, process bottlenecks, or other constraints where emerging technologies or IT innovation can create opportunities.
Understand enterprise investment parameters for innovation and new technologies so appropriate strategies are developed.

APO04.03 Monitor and scan the technology environment.

Perform systematic monitoring and scanning of the enterprise’s external environment to identify emerging technologies that have the potential to create value (e.g., by realizing the enterprise strategy, optimizing costs, avoiding obsolescence, and better enabling enterprise and IT processes). Monitor the marketplace, competitive landscape, industry sectors, and legal and regulatory trends to be able to analyze emerging technologies or innovation ideas in the enterprise context.

Understand the enterprise’s interest and potential for adopting new technology innovations and focus awareness efforts on the most opportunistic technology innovations.
Perform research and scanning of the external environment, including appropriate web sites, journals and conferences, to identify emerging technologies.
Consult with third-party experts where needed to confirm research findings or as a source of information on emerging technologies.
Capture staff members’ IT innovation ideas and analyze them for potential implementation.

APO04.04 Assess the potential of emerging technologies and innovation ideas.

Analyze identified emerging technologies and/or other IT innovation suggestions. Work with stakeholders to validate assumptions on the potential of new technologies and innovation.

Evaluate identified technologies, considering aspects such as time to reach maturity, inherent risk of new technologies (including potential legal implications), fit with the enterprise architecture, and potential to provide additional value.
Identify any issues that may need to be resolved or proven through a proof-of-concept initiative.
Scope the proof-of-concept initiative, including desired outcomes, required budget, time frames and responsibilities.
Obtain approval for the proof-of-concept initiative.
Conduct proof-of-concept initiatives to test emerging technologies or other innovation ideas, identify any issues, and determine whether further implementation or roll-out should be considered based on feasibility and potential ROI.

APO04.05 Recommend appropriate further initiatives.

Evaluate and monitor the results of proof-of-concept initiatives and, if favorable, generate recommendations for further initiatives and gain stakeholder support.

Document proof-of-concept results, including guidance and recommendations for trends and innovation programmes.
Communicate viable innovation opportunities into the IT strategy and enterprise architecture processes.
Follow up on proof-of-concept initiatives to measure the degree to which they have been leveraged in actual investment.
Analyse and communicate reasons for rejected proof-of-concept initiatives.

APO04.06 Monitor the implementation and use of innovation.

Monitor the implementation and use of emerging technologies and innovations during integration, adoption and for the full economic life cycle to ensure that the promised benefits are realized and to identify lessons learned.

Assess the implementation of the new technologies or IT innovations adopted as part of IT strategy and enterprise architecture developments and their realization during programme management of initiatives.
Capture lessons learned and opportunities for improvement.
Adjust the innovation plan, if required.
Identify and evaluate the potential value to be realized from the use of innovation.

References :

ISACA. (2012). COBIT 5 Enabling Processes. USA: ISACA.

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