A group at Vertex Pharmaceuticals took that time to enter a competition for designing next-generation health care networks and won, says David Kuttler, speaking at the CIO Innovation Summit run by the Massachusetts High Tech Council.

Groups of IT workers would meet once a month to consider what forces were driving Vertex's business and how IT could help improve the company's performance, Kuttler says. "What came out was what worked well and what didn't," he says.

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But the thing that got the program started was the initiative to free up time, he says, and making sure it was a priority respected throughout the company. "Managers got dinged if their employees didn't get their innovation time," he says.

Other participants on the conference panel titled "How CIOs move from the room to the boardroom" pushed for smart hiring and smart decision-making processes.