You may have been the first Fortune 500 executive given the title "chief innovation officer" when you were named to the post by Textron in April 2000. How did the role come about?I was hired here in November 1999 in a traditional CIO role. At that time, there was a ton of work going on in the e-business world. I had a lot of experience in sales and marketing prior to coming into IT.
Over the course of two board meetings, I presented what we needed to be looking at from [the viewpoint of] procurement and engineering with e-business. This is a bigger opportunity than IT; it's about business models. I made that clear to the board and the chairman. And our chairman [Lewis B. Campbell], who has been a very aggressive learner, realized that there was an opportunity for us to create something new and different.
We call it our "journey of transformation." At the time, we had 11 business units, none of which could connect or communicate with each other. So my job initially was to create this infrastructure so you could have this connectivity throughout the Textron environment. A lot of companies had already done it by then. Textron had not. It had inhibited our ability to communicate as a company.
We also consolidated over 180 data centers to two. And we standardized on a single laptop. We did a billion-dollar outsourcing deal with CSC to give us the security we needed and a common thread of IT applications like payroll, finance and insurance.
The biggest thing that came out of it was the development of a Web site to show the whereabouts of our executives and [provide] information on demand, essentially. That got us to look into other things, like online auctions for commodity materials and online maintenance procurement for our jet aircraft. This allowed us to grow into other areas as we got into far-reaching opportunities.
On the engineering front, we very rapidly began developing consistent methods around how we wanted to design and develop products.
What are some recent examples of innovation at Textron? If we think about product innovation, we're putting together a new piston aircraft called the . It was developed in a traditional style. The chairman at Cessna [Jack Pelton] said he didn't want anyone to know about it. It was an innovative process that wrapped in a new product.
But what I found intriguing was that it brought in such an innovative process that we had [ professor] come in and talk to us about it. The concept is that you have to be innovative on the back end. If you don't manage that, some upstart can outgrow you from the bottom up. So we decided that we needed a new business model for this.
How did your background as an IT leader help prepare you for the chief innovation officer role? IT is one of the few areas where you have to manage between the department silos. The IT person is one of the few who understands managing the white space.
What are the biggest challenges you face in your role? When it's all said and done, the whole game is still about people. Some of the biggest challenges are being able to create a vision that people can look toward with a spirit of expectation. When we got to thinking about how to change the holding company to an operating company, the CEO and I said that all of the [business unit] CIOs would be hard-lined back into my office rather than into each of the business offices.
Those are some of the frustrations we'd run into: "Don't mess in my sandbox." But as we developed a proven track record, people saw that this wasn't about changing reporting structures; it was about creating the right path for the businesses.
You also oversee Textron's Global Technology Center in India. How difficult is it to find qualified IT professionals and engineers in India? We're having tremendous success at finding highly qualified people in all of our industry groups. In the Bangalore area, there are a lot of IT professionals as well as a lot of very good colleges.
We also are blessed with a very low turnover rate. The average turnover rate for engineers in India is 14% to 18%. Ours is 7% to 8%.
What other markets do you draw from for these types of skills? We've focused on Bangalore as our engineering center for Asia. We have international purchasing and sourcing offices in China, India, Poland and Mexico.
In addition to overseeing engineering and information systems for Textron, you're also responsible for the company's integrated supply chain and its Lean Transformation and Six Sigma efforts. How do you balance your time? I have no life. I have an office in Texas, in Detroit, in Providence -- and I live in Phoenix. In every one of my remote offices, I have a change of dress, because I don't know from one day to the next where I'll be.
I like to go on these [a lean manufacturing concept: walking along the shop floor where the work is done]. It's so much more effective if I go see something that's happening on the shop floor than to have it described to me. It takes a lot of energy, but it's one of the most satisfying aspects of the job.
A growing number of CIOs have taken on additional responsibilities outside of IT, such as supply chain and logistics. Are there certain business disciplines you think CIOs are well suited to oversee? Most times, the reality is, it's dependent on the person and not so much on the job. So I think that for some of those people who had a spirit of learning as they were going through the IT arena, they're capable of managing multiple functions.
You're also a member of's advisory board. What's that like? The advisory board is really a neat process. They throw out ideas about what they're thinking about doing. This is not a customer group. It's really, "OK, guys, give us your thoughts. Here's what we're thinking about." Nick [Donofrio, IBM's executive vice president of innovation and technology] has been open to share his innovation processes with the advisory board. We meet three times a year by phone and three times a year in person.
My involvement is holding us to the truth of an advisory board: Don't ask me to buy anything, but ask my opinion about something, and I'll tell you about the pluses and minuses of it.
Interview by former Computerworld national correspondent Thomas Hoffman. He can be reached at .
This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition.
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