…many vendors today say it is IT that makes the difference to enabling business innovation. Mark Twain’s response to such a claim would likely have been to repeat another of his famous remarks: “Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid.”

Dan McLean of Globe and Mail analyze in his recent article one of the usual claims made by IT vendors. Today: IT driven innovation.

In their pursuit of selling another bottle of “snake-oil” SAP turn around a survey of “Canada’s leading IT executives” to show the link between IT an innovation.

Dan digs a little in the survey read it correctly:

The telling point may be what respondents ranked as the top benefit of IT. Operational efficiency was voted No. 1 by 36 per cent and business productivity came out on top in the minds of 26 per cent.

By comparison, business innovation ranked No. 1 with only 6 per cent of respondents — behind the IT benefit of mobilizing work forces, which was cited by 8 per cent. And yet, SAP’s press release announced the survey results under the headline: “Canada’s Road to Business Growth and Innovation Runs Through the IT Department.”

IT can do a lot for any organization, but many times it collapses under the pressure created by vendor hype. If you read the marketing materials you’ll think that every vendor has laid out an asteroid.
IT is a tool, a very powerful tool, a very smart tool, but only a tool. A tool cannot be smarter than the one using it.

Thanks Dan for the head up and people, go read the original article!