Phil Garland, CIO of PricewaterCoopers, says that an innovative culture starts at the top, and that all levels of staff should be encouraged to be innovative, but also be allowed to fail when coming up with new ideas.
Watch the video or read the transcript.
"It really starts from the top. Without a commitment from the top, at the CEO level, innovation won't be successful. However our CEO actually has a very entrepreneurial and innovative mindset. So because of that, that has really started to instill an innovative culture and an entrepreneurial culture and as a result, we've established not only teams to focus on innovation and be a think tank if you will, to kind of think outside-the-box, we also have encouraged it with all of our staff and have included it in goal setting for our staff, to encourage all staff at all levels, to be innovative. And whether that's in reality more process-improvement or efficiency gains, that's still okay.That's still a good thing. Or sometimes it's really thinking of something very creative that is truly innovative. Then we'll grab those ideas work together with whoever the business sponsor is working with IT to help develop and nurture those innovative ideas.
How we reward innovation is — I mean there are some financial incentives, but it is more about the culture and building the culture so that it just comes naturally. So the way innovation would be rewarded in our firm is through, first of all, encouragement, but also facilitation to be innovative. It's okay to to fail when you're coming up with new ideas."
Read, "A five-step model for successful IT innovation."
Philip Garland is a Partner at PwC and serves as Chief Information Officer for the US firm. In this capacity, Mr. Garland is responsible for the design and enhanced technology infrastructure for the future, improving the user experience and ensuring that technology appropriately aligns with and enables the firm’s businesses and strategic support functions. He is also responsible for ensuring that PwC’s IT team is operating efficiently to enable PwC to be an early adopter of technology, respond to change with agility and deploy value for our clients.
