How Your Innovation Culture Can Benefit with Digital Enterprise Architecture

A weakness to innovate may lead businesses to stagnation, however, innovation is a complex process that should be addressed and it is identified to have a critical importance for organisation’s success. Modern innovating organisations make everything possible to adapt and develop their business within the business structure. The perspective of innovation culture emphasises that idea generation and development should be possible for everybody and in today context, it is being address by digital solution.

In order for organisations to realise the innovation culture, they first have to model and develop their digital organisation structure on the base of coordination among various business units within the organisation. Digital organisation relies on the right information to innovate and this is where Digital Enterprise architecture (EA) plays a key important role of digital transformation for many companies, as it has an impact on nearly every business process. Implementing a digital EA strategy can help digital organisations creating a competitive advantage while generating more values from their technology investment to drive innovation culture by providing open access to new ideas and knowledge.

Digital EA Strategy Accelerate Innovation Culture

Figure 1: The Synergy of Innovation Culture

To be successful, Digital EA strategy should be created to align with the business goals and objectives. For example, if an organisation wants to become a digital enterprise and transform the operating model, then this Digital EA strategy should focus on digital transformation. This is easier said than done. One of the most challenging aspects of implementing Digital EA strategy is balancing the needs of both the business and IT. This means that many organisations end up with an "IT-driven" or "business-driven" strategy as opposed to one that best serves the organisation as a whole.

Building innovation culture requires a clear picture of the current reality and a vision of the direction the organisation desires to move towards. Therefore, it is important to know where they are heading for real. Innovation culture of an organisation can be built with a participatory manner that involves all the members of the organisation. It is important to note that the synergy between technology, people, process and data is what allows the organisations to drive and continuously sustaining the innovation culture.

In order to create a successful innovation culture with Digital EA, organisations should focus on strategic thrusts that drive innovation and collaboration across departments and disciplines. The strategy must be capable of implementing worthwhile innovation projects as well as recognising business strategies that transform the organisations toward digital. When these two are integrated, organisations can reap better benefits and develop synergies.

When Digital EA in place, it is possible to reduce the management of organisation’s complexity. In order to do this, Digital EA should plays an active role as ‘command & control’, the centre for connecting various transformation changes to empower innovation by creating autonomous business and technology capabilities with minimal dependencies.

Implementing Digital EA Strategy

There are many motivation to implement Digital EA strategy. It can help your organisation stay competitive by providing access to new ideas, knowledge, and innovation opportunities. It also helps to manage digital transformation by identifying the gaps in business, information, application and infrastructure solutions that should be addressed as part of the digital transformation opportunities. Digital business relies on the right information to make decisions and operate. Implementing an EA strategy can help to identify dependency and impact analysis by creating a competitive advantage and generate more value from digital technology investments.

Without Digital EA strategy in place, it is a challenge for organisations to be innovative and stay competitive in today’s dynamic business environment. The global pandemic has created a more competitive market place where emerging economies are taking advantage of the opportunity, which is making it difficult for some organisations to maintain their market share. In order to compete and maintain market share, organisations need to be innovative, but they also need a more solid foundation to support their innovation. This can be achieved with a digital EA strategy that is aligned with the goals of the organisation.