I read an interesting article about the role of the IT organization in enterprise innovation, written by a former colleague of mine, Charles Babcock. The story, "IT Must Play a Central Role in Enterprise Innovation," spoke to many of the key challenges that both CIOs and their IT teams face in their efforts to help drive (not just support) innovation within their companies.

The story, which was based on reactions to the issue from a panel of CIOs and other industry experts at Interop 2011 in Las Vegas this week, included a quote from Nationwide Financial Services CIO Emeritus Bruce Barnes which to me captured the essence of the biggest challenge facing the potential innovative-ness of CIOs themselves: time and bandwidth.

Over the past few months, there have been a few articles and studies published that examine the chief obstacles to enterprise innovation. One of the best articles was written by business strategy expert Gary Hamel for The Wall St. Journal. Although Hamel's article predominantly focused on which companies are particularly innovative and why, he did devote a section to what he cites as the top seven limits to organizational innovation, including:

-Few, if any, employees have been trained as business innovators