IT organisations score highly on innovation

IT is more likely to innovate than other company departments, but UK business could do more overall to promote new ideas.

IT departments are significant drivers of innovation within UK companies, and IT staff are more likely than colleagues to see innovation as a core part of their job, according to a report on smarter working.

Research carried out by consultancy Loudhouse into UK firms employing more than 250 employees found that staff in IT roles are more likely to believe that innovation is important to their companies. They are also more likely to believe they make a personal contribution to generating new ideas or new working practices.

In turn, IT departments are more likely than other lines of business to have formal structures in place to reward innovation, even though they were less likely to have separate resources to support it.

Three quarters of staff in IT roles believe that innovation is an important part of their jobs, against 63 per cent across all functions. As many as 79 per cent of IT staff ranked innovation as important to their companies, against 69 per cent for respondents as a whole. More than half of IT staff -- 55 per cent -- felt that their employers encouraged innovation, against 43 per cent for all employees.

The research was commissioned by software vendor Adobe in order to understand the factors that make organisations innovative.

The report found a strong correlation between efficiency and innovation in business. But it also found that although most organisations pay lip service to innovation, fewer back this up with incentives. Across all organisations and roles, just 30 per cent of staff surveyed said that their organisations had specific rewards or incentives for innovation. IT staff fared better, with 41 per cent enjoying such schemes.

"Businesses need innovation and new ideas, but invention is not innovation, just a good idea that might have a potential application," said Professor David Gann - Chair in Technology and Innovation Management at Imperial College. "It is essential to have the right culture and the right conditions to improve performance." Technology, especially collaboration tools, is increasingly important for this, he said.

Commenting on the report, Craig Tegel, managing director for Northern Europe at Adobe, pointed out that new ideas need space to develop into viable products or services. Some of Adobe's own innovations, such as the PDF file format, might have been axed if the company had relied on initial sales figures alone.

"Innovation is not just about technology, but about people and processes, and how they are used and developed," he said.