Martin Curley

Using the IT Capability Maturity Framework to Improve IT Capability and Value Creation: An Intel IT Case Study

This paper gives a short overview of the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) and describes how it was used between 2007-2009 to help Intel IT navigate and track progress on IT capability improvement and value contribution from IT, whilst negotiating a strategic transition for the IT organization which involved significant downsizing and budget reduction. The case study illustrates how the IT-CMF was used to measure capability improvements, provide business intelligence information and prioritized improvement recommendations. The paper also discusses how practices contained within the IT-CMF helped articulate a business value improvement whilst more traditional metrics of IT performance indicated a degradation in performance.

Methods and Metrics to improve the Yield of IT using the IT-CMF - an Intel Case Study

This paper provides an overview of the IT capability maturity framework (IT-CMFTM) with a specific focus on the value metrics. The IT-CMFTM is an integrating CIO level framework based on the synthesis of academic research and industry best practice which can help CIOs increase the value that IT delivers and improve the productivity of the IT function. The paper introduces nascent macro measures of IT value performance illustrated with examples and data from an Intel IT case study.

The Evolution of Innovation

The rapid spread of information and communications technology coupled with significant increases and lower costs of international flights and freight have created a changing innovation landscape. The EU OISPG sketches an evolution picture for the practice of innovation as shown in the figure below. In the past, much innovation came from individuals in places such as Bell Labs or IBM labs, which used a closed or vertical innovation approach. Open Innovation 2.0 (OI 2.0) as defined by the EU Open Innovation and Strategy Policy group (OISPG 2010) sees the benefits of collaboration and networking from a broader perspective as a way for firms and other organizations to improve their innovation base so as to make optimal use of the societal capital and ‘creative commons’ at their disposal.

Sustainable Intelligent Living

Sustainable innovation can have several meanings and all of them are desirable. Firstly, innovations that result in better more efficient use of resources and secondly innovations that have longevity. We define innovation (Baldwin and Curley 2007) as the adoption and creation of something new, which create value for the entities that adopt and create/deliver the innovation. The business proposition for a particular innovation is only sustainable if both the creating and receiving entities achieve value more than the cost of creation and delivery and the cost of adoption. Increasingly, we are seeing that the unit of competition is moving to the ecosystem (Curley 2015).

Openness to Innovation and Innovation Culture

Open innovation requires courage to be open for innovation. It requires courage to seek (and discover) the new which might lead to disruptive solutions. Openness to innovation also has a twin: courage for seeking the unexpected. Experimentation involves failures but not fundamental and costly ones, and thus the probability of finding timely scale-up solutions is significantly higher than in traditional project approach.

Data-Driven Innovation

Big data and data-driven innovation are creating significant information monetization opportunities. Former European Research Commissioner, Maire Geogeghan Quinn, coined the phrase ‘Knowledge is the crude oil of the 21st century’ and it aptly describes the opportunity. Even this analogy is not powerful enough as data or knowledge does not get used up as it is shared or used up, as it is a non-rival good. In fact, it often multiplies. Debra Amidon, Piero Formica, and others have defined the three laws of knowledge dynamics which underpin the practice of data driven innovation.

Ecosystem Orchestration and Management

An ecosystem can be defined as a network of interdependent organizations or people in a specific environment with partly shared perspectives, resources, aspirations, and directions (Andersson, Curley and Formica 2010). The ecosystems with the biggest critical mass and the greatest velocity will have the most momentum and will ultimately win.

Agile Development and Production

Agile development and production is hugely important as development and adoption cycles shrink. The clock-speed of virtually every industry is being shortened by digital disruption. The objective of agile development and production is to move iteratively as quickly as possible from idea to a product or service, which meets a need or opportunity. Agile production is about creating and supporting the processes, training and tools quickly and iteratively create new products and services as well as responding to customer needs and market shifts. A key enabling factor is the development of a production support tools to allow the relevant organization members from designers, developers, and marketers to a common database of code and other parts. As different products cycle through the production process from concept to product or service, they draw upon and also add to the manufacturing support platform.

Designing for Adoption

A hallmark of OI2 is the focus on adoption and innovation in OI2 is defined by the creation and adoption of something new, which creates value for the entities that adopt it. Similar to the movement of ‘Design for Manufacturing’ where engineers designing products consider how to make products more easily manufacturable, designing and innovation for adoption is critical for successful adoption of innovations. According to the OECD, 80% of the value of innovation comes from the successful adoption of an innovation with just 20% of the value coming from the creation activity. This is of course obvious and often we consider the hard part of innovation to be the creation phase and this is where most resources are often committed. However ironically as stated most of the value from an innovation comes when it is adopted which is the phase that is least considered or invested in. By carefully considering the factors required for successful adoption, we can significantly increase the probability of successful adoption. We see that the quadruple helix co-creation process is crucial for rapid scalability of new extended products, especially in new markets.