JetBlue Airways Corp.

The way Todd Thompson, CIO at JetBlue, sees it, everything the company does is innovative, from e-ticketing to the televisions in each seat back. "We set out specifically to change the way customers experience the airline," he says.

To support that goal, teams within IT are aligned with business groups, and a project manager is assigned to each business department. IT workers spend at least one day per month embedded with users. That way, Thompson says, "when they talk about checking in a customer or what it's like in the cockpit, we know what that means."

JetBlue keeps its development process light through quick prototyping and rapid development methods, as well as Microsoft's .Net architecture, Web services and object-oriented methods.

The IT group is always ready to respond quickly to good new ideas. Thompson boasts that high-impact/low-effort projects can blast from charter to execution in one day.