Chief Innovation Officer: The Roles and Responsibilities

Sorean Kaplan, in an article on Inc., writes that despite the rising demand for a chief innovation officer, on the part of most companies, over the years, very few organizations have actually unearthed the true functionality of this role. To make it easier for companies to understand the responsibilities that the position of a chief innovation officer entails, Kaplan provides clarity on this multi-faceted role and enunciates the results that an enterprise might expect upon recruiting a CIO.

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To begin with, Sorean elaborates on the three chief functions that a chief innovation officer is expected to fulfill. The first, she writes, is to identify and develop new opportunities for expansion, followed by the facilitation of innovation through the development of technical and employee-driven restructuring. The final role is to propel innovation as the chief impetus of the organization and thereby, to attract the best of creative talent out there. Kaplan explains that a CIO who duly discharges the above three roles will bring forth multiple benefits for the organization, as a whole. For instance, not only will they craft a strategy for innovation acceptable to all the stakeholders involved but also ensure that it garners revenues as well as propels the company’s growth, in the long run. Besides, they will also corroborate the proper implementation of such innovations which, in turn, will set apart the enterprise from the rest of the competitors by virtue of the innovative vision that the company will be associated with and the one that it will stand for, at large.

To conclude, Sorean states that organizations should not limit themselves to merely seeking certain minimal innovations at regular intervals. Rather, they should push for such groundbreaking alterations that are sure to further the company’s success, a function that duly fits the role of a chief innovation officer.