The Real Trump Cards: #10 Traits Organizations Explore in their Innovation Officers A transformative, change champion is a key ingredient of an Innovation Officer

Indian companies, especially sectors like information technology, are in dire need of disruptive and innovative technologies to revamp their business strategies.

Traditional companies and business groups today are also re-working their strategies to bring on innovative ideas and amalgamate them with their existing business models. SMEs and MSMEs are looking for smart and innovative folks, who are well-learnt and aware of how to integrate new technologies to existing businesses.

Chief Innovation Officer or simply Innovation Officers, today play an integral part of organizations today; be it healthcare, banks, venture funds, education organizations and more. Especially when India as a country is warming up to a cashless economy and programs such as Digital India, Smart City Plans and more. Their tasks include carrying out market research, coming up with interesting marketing methods, encourage disruptive thinking and hire dynamic talent.

Entrepreneur spoke to executives belonging to various domains and here are some qualities they believe organizations look for in their innovation officers today –

• For a company to be regularly innovative, their people, processes and priorities have to be geared to continuously and relentlessly be focused on making improvements to their products and services
• People in this role lead their companies' efforts to find and develop ideas for new products
• To ensure that good ideas become the next generation of new products, chief innovation officers collaborate with all levels of the organization
• The officers also work closely with senior executives to ensure that innovation aligns with corporate strategy and receives adequate funding
• The prime quality for the chief marketing officer includes the ability to drive innovation, ideas and action around vision.
• This role is more of a responsibility rather than a fancy designation, other key requisites includes the analytical skills, excellent interpersonal skills, strong business knowledge, inquisitive and creative mind to develop inventive strategies and direct new projects.
• Apply design thinking principles to craft services and solutions for the clients
• Candidate should understand how latest technology and overall digital strategy can unlock value for her company and not just follow the hype of the market
• A transformative, change champion is also key ingredient of an innovation officer.
• The candidate should be visionary who understand "tomorrow" of his enterprise well and works with the leadership team to build right culture and DNA to be "innovation ready"

(Read more about these guys in the April Issue of Entrepreneur Magazine 2017)