“Innovation is a journey, not a destination”

Driving deep into the spirit of innovation, Munender Soperna, IT Head, Dr Lal PathLabs speaks about the way CIOs and IT leaders look at innovation and why innovation is important today.

Q) Today’s CIO are seen as change agents. Enterprise community is now expecting big transformation from CIOs or IT leaders. How can a CIO move into this direction and succeed towards innovation?

IT is a backbone of any growing organisation and now a day’s CIO’s are treated like transformers not the enablers. Change is always a painful event and only a visionary or a hardcore manager can handle the “Change” in a proactive and professional way. A perfect and proven CIO should have domain/business knowledge first and if any CIO have domain/business knowledge along with a Technology then it become a deadly combination. If someone has business knowledge and knows the pains of the users, then any type of innovation which is required for business, can be converted into business numbers and easily acceptable by the end/business users.

Q) How do you look at the innovation space? Of course there are no rules and boundaries for innovation, but according to you, what are some of the technologies that on which innovation can be done?

Innovation is a very vast field and innovation areas varies from technology-to-technology, business vertical to business vertical but now a day’s, “Mobility” and “Cloud” is the buzz word in the market. Though, I am representing “Healthcare” vertical specially “Diagnostic Lab”. There are lots of spaces/areas to cover and implement the projects under these technologies but someone should have a clear road map for the same because one fine day they may encounter challenges like:

1. BYOD

2. Availability of infrastructure at Tier-2 & 3 cities

3. Availability of heterogeneous environment as far as OS and platform are concern under Mobility space

Q) How do you personally encourage innovation within your own team of IT people?

Innovation is a journey not a destination and everyone in the system/organisation has to keep thinking and thinking should be in direction to following points:

1. Innovation project should be in line with the interest of the User

2. Innovation should have business values/needs or transforms the business numbers/benefits

3. There should be handsome & acceptable period for ROI

4. Innovation should be scalable as far as performance is concern and in line with business growth plan

5. There should be a robust technology road map for any type of Innovation or its project

Q) What is your mantra to move up the value chain in your career of IT implementation and creating value for the organisation?

Since last one decade, I am leading the projects and these projects were “Mission Critical” in nature and being as a leader of a project, I have no other choice to give my 100% effort.

During implementation, someone has to loose sleep and every time I found myself in the situation, which can fulfil the requirement of the time. I follow or have only one mantra for any successful implementation:

“THINK LIKE A LEADER AND WORK LIKE A TEAM MEMBER”

If you follow the above mentioned mantra then I am sure, implementation becomes a “Success Story” and no one can stop you.

Q in ideal scenario how do you innovate in today’s context?

Though I am from User Industry and worked with in the same industry throughout the carrier, my Innovation is very much inclined to business as well as considering “Users” interest in mind with their needs/requirements. Every Innovation should have value for money and there should be good ROI

Q) How can IT lead the change in an organisation today?

Today is the time of “BT” not the “IT”. BT stands for “Business Technology”, if IT executives have a business knowledge then it become a deadly combination and such type of IT persons can transform the new changes to the Key/End Users very effectively, promptly and proactively.

IT/BT executives are always an insulator between “Implementation Partner” Vs “Key/End Users”. They can understand the pains of both the parties and can play a good role which transform into a good and successful implementation story of any project.

Q) How do you unwind when you are not working?

I am impulsive by nature. I always fight with myself, either on work or not. I keep thinking but I like old Hindi movie songs and like good management/ Business strategic books too.