A CIO, or Chief Innovation Officer, is the member of the executive team who has direct responsibility for the innovation results of an organization. This role isn’t an R&D officer, and this isn’t a marketing officer, nor is this an operations officer. Instead, it’s someone whose job is to focus 100 percent on innovation. The job encompasses both the innovation process and the innovation results, based on the understanding that strong and reliable results come from a well-structured and rigorously-managed process.

To do this job well, a CIO has to engage with people throughout the organization, and outside of it. You will have to push and prod, and pull, and lead, and also manage, coach, facilitate, demand, and also design the innovation process that will be used throughout your organization. You will have to inspire people throughout the organization to achieve innovative results in innovation projects, and to develop innovative ideas.

One of the most important factors to note is that the CIO’s job, your job, is not to be the most creative or innovative person in the organization, nor to come up with the best ideas. Rather, your job is to be the manager of a system of innovation, which of course is an entirely different thing. 

A system of innovation is a rigorous process for creating ideas and turning those ideas into business value. And because it involves nearly every aspect of the organization, managing innovation is inherently a complex undertaking, one that requires a breath of expertise from you, and the ability to garner wide participation by many, many people who will be the creative geniuses behind innovation, as well as those many others who will provide the deep expertise in many fields and disciplines, which may include science and engineering, finance, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, human resources, and, in fact, every other discipline and specialty that composes the contemporary organization.

Each of them, and you, may approach these issues and challenges of innovation as a matter of creative challenge, and for those who approach it this way, innovation brings out the creative genius in each of us. 

In some organizations, although not many, the chief executive also plays the role of Chief Innovation Officer. The late Steve Jobs, of course, exemplified that role so well because he wanted to be identified with the innovations produced by Apple. Hundreds of designers and thousands of engineers also contributed significantly to the clever and elegant products and services that Apple developed and sold, but Jobs became the front man, the human face of innovation at Apple, although he was by no means the only one whose talents as a creative seeker and inspirational leader were involved or required.