The Clash of the Titans: CIO and LOB Engagement in IT Innovation

The emergence of digital technologies provides organizations with affordable, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn technologies that opens line-of-business (LOB) managers to participate in information technology-led innovations. Such participatory actions by the LOB-managers in information technology (IT) innovations at the department levels will lead the creation of new roles like the ?chief digital marketing officer.' While the overall outlook for innovation becomes positive through such expanding contributions of the LOB-managers, such additions will ignite new challenges. Especially, such roles and approaches will contest the traditional centralized technology management approaches. This chapter provides three engagement models on how the LOB-managers and chief information officers could interact harmoniously to enhance the quality of IT innovations led by LOB-managers.