Have you ever been in a conference room with a white board and someone using a marker and talking innovation? It all looks so easy. The stock price is £4, we’re going to drive it to £80 in two years – let’s not get bogged down in the detail – who has some bright ideas?

James A. Gardner has plenty of bright ideas in his book, “Innovation and the Future Proof Bank” and one of the most basic is that ideas are nowhere near enough for innovation. His ideas won’t fit on a white board, and they don’t lend themselves to some simple solution.

The former innovation chief at Lloyds TSB bank in London and a sophisticated blogger at BankerVision, he has been working in this innovation business for years. He has recently moved into government and now is a Director in Corporate Information Technology at the Department of Work and Pensions in the UK, where he is accountable for innovation, architecture and strategy.

Here is an excerpt from “Innovation and the Future Proof Bank”: “Controlling change is a mantra for IT organisations in banks. Given the opportunity to avoid a change, most IT Chiefs will do so. Unfortunately, though, almost everything an innovator does is likely to need a system change. This presents the key dilemma for an innovation professional: how to represent a change (which will likely have small short term returns) in a way that avoids it being subordinated by changes which have significant and immediate benefits.”

It isn’t every day that you come across a technology that offers sustainable returns above and beyond the investment timeframe. Yet, you can have OSMO® working for your organisation every day with minimal impact on your IT infrastructure. Which just goes to show: You can introduce radical change to future proof your operations, without the fear generally associated with changing your systems.