In opening the day's first panel at the MIT CIO Symposium yesterday, moderator Joe Chung of Redstar Ventures fooled us. While discussing the CEO's role in driving innovation, he told a story about how innovation giant Apple was way too far in front of the curve with a new mobile technology. Odd, right? Because most people think of Apple as being the very model for timing the launch of a new mobile device.

But Chung wasn't talking about the iPhone. Or the iPad. Or the iPod. He was talking about the Newton. The Apple Newton, a PDA released in 1993, when the term PDA meant something very different. "It just didn't work," Chung said of the $100 million venture spearheaded by then Apple CEO John Sculley.

So what's the lesson there? Apple didn't simply stop innovating. It kept coming at it and later developed the mobile device that changed the world. While Chung fooled us all with his Newton story, it led in to the question of the day: How can innovation be groomed in an organization and particularly, what role can the CIO serve in that process?

During the CEO panel, for example, Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai Technologies, emphasized the danger of the HIPPO effect, where the highest paid person in the organization present in the room gets final say on an idea. "Innovation is like a spark in that it can be extinguished quite easily. One person just has to say 'no' and an idea is dead. So for innovation to flourish, you need to fan the flames." 
To help fan those flames at his company, Leighton hosts an Innovation Showcase each quarter where innovative ideas from within Akamai--a product, business process improvement, anything--are showcased.

Kazu Gomi, CEO of NTT America, pointed out that the top priority for CIOs today is bringing more value to their companies and the best way to do that is by leading and encouraging innovation that creates more efficiency and better products or services.

The members of the CIO panel later in the morning put a finer point on that theme. Michael Golz, SVP and CIO Americas for SAP, said the "SAP Runs SAP" strategy has been very effective in helping drive innovation throughout the company. Not only does it provide early and educated feedback on new products, but it also lets the CIO talk to customers and early adopters as peers -- both users of the same technology. (He even used one of my least favorite business expressions -- "open the kimono" to describe it).

Golz also pointed to an internal "gallery" of apps that SAP uses to encourage employees to be more innovative. In fact, he pointed out that a single sign-on app that is used in nearly all SAP products today was actually developed by a young employee in SAP purchasing.

In short, Golz said, IT has to change its perception from being an internal service to being a key part of the business. But to do that, a lot has to change. Panelist Georgia Papathomas, VP and CIO of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals, pointed out that "one of the problems with IT is that everything takes too long." Leveraging new technology like cloud and mobile, however, can make the average IT organization much more agile in its work, so that the business doesn't want to make its decisions without IT's involvement.

Another way that both Golz and Papathomas agreed IT can change its perception is with language. "Our biggest challenge is to get IT not to talk 'IT' because we talk a language the business does not," Papathomas said. Golz added that providing new technology to high-level executives in the business first can be an effective method of spreading the technology rather than starting at the user level.
Along those lines, in an afternoon panel focusing on agility, Michael Relich, EVP and CIO at Guess Inc. described a project where he hired a graphic designer to build Hollywood-themed dashboards for a more user-friendly feel that tied rich media to deep data.

It was an informative day and by the end of it all, the message was clear -- the key to IT and the CIO driving innovation across the business is to develop its relationship with the business more. Because you just never know where the next great idea may come from.

Another SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG in the rearview mirror ... and I have the blisters on my feet to prove it. This year's event had a good blend of high-level big-impact news and tactical user-level information that should keep everyone in the ecosystem satisfied. At least for now. Here's a few notes. 

On the big-bang news side of things, SAP made a few major announcements at SAPPHIRE NOW. They include:

SAP Business Suite on HANA is now Generally Available to customers. As Hasso Plattner said in his keynote, "It's no longer about HANA, but the applications on top of HANA." 

Release of SAP Fiori, a collection of 25 apps that are focused on renewing the user experience for the most common business functions, such as workflow approvals, information lookups and self-service tasks. They're device-agnostic-- meaning they can be used on mobile devices and desktops using browsers that support HTML5.
As CTO Vishal Sikka pointed out, Fiori means flower in Italian, and flowers are "the perfect blend of mathematics and design" in nature. (That imagery figured heavily in Sikka's portion of the keynote.) 

Renaming of SAP Visual Intelligence as Lumira. (When the founder of your company calls it a "stupid name" it's time to switch).

Release of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 (I didn't personally catch much new on this, but I'm sure our in-house BI guru Scott Wallask will have plenty to say soon over on BusinessObjects Expert. Heck, he was way out in front of it all in a post here.

Announcement that SAP HANA is "no longer a little girl" by Sikka. (Note to SAP communications: That "little girl" metaphor's getting a little...uncomfortable. Just sayin'.)

But in addition to the big-splash keynote news, there were demos galore on the show floor and SAP continues to do a great job of making its technology available to everyone interested, from customers to partners to analysts and media. (I think some folks in the ecosystem might be a bit spoiled by SAP's openness in this area -- not all companies do this).

And the ASUG sessions up on the South Concourse provided a plethora of customer experience presentations across a wide variety of topics. In addition to what I outlined here I caught sessions on super user programs, IT testing practices, experiences in the early adoption of SAP HANA, best practices in deploying RDS, and best practices in educating SAP user base, all led by real SAP customers who were very frank about their experiences.

And in addition to all of that, here's a few of my personal notes from the week:

SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard was not at the conference because his "superdad" passed away and he was back in Denmark with family sharing the LarsLuv where it was needed most this week. (I did like the video he provided that compared the "promises" he made on the SAPPHIRE NOW stage last year to the results today. Fact checking himself--nice touch.)

SAP is continuing to stick its toe in the B2C water, which will be interesting to watch in the future. Right now, it still feels like.. a toe in the water.

At the risk of sounding like a blue kool-aid addict, I really like the keynote progression at the event. Bill McDermott's sports-related keynote on Tuesday got things off to a fun start. Jim Hagemann Snabe's more product and strategy focused keynote on Wednesday gives the roadmap junkies what they're looking for. And Hasso Plattner's professorial presentation on Thursday transitioned to Vishal Sikka's always engaging talk has a really nice "flow" to it.

The annual press event Wednesday night at the Harley-Davidson factory had a great "vibe" to it as well, although the length of the bus ride out there did have more than a few of us paranoid press types wondering if we had got on the wrong bus and were heading to a bingo weekend in Boca or something.

Dark data is the new old buzzword. If you've been around a while, it's not new to you.

Twitter continues to grow in the ecosystem. If I'm going to continue to live tweet keynotes, I'm going to have to run my iPhone on HANA.

A couple years ago, the question in mobility was if the iPad was going to be an effective tool for business. Yeah, we have our answer now.

The Ariba crew gets the most “road warrior” points. Last week Ariba LIVE in DC. This week SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando. Next week, Ariba LIVE in Berlin. These folks understand to grow a network you gotta rack up some frequent flyer miles, that’s for sure.

Well if it was customer benchmarking you were looking for, you got your iPad full today. The morning keynote hosted by SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott and his surprise guest host featured three unique SAP customers. (For more on that, check out Ken Murphy's review of it here).

After the keynote, the trio of SAP customers -- Under Armour, NBA, and the 49ers -- joined McDermott for a press conference where the customers elaborated a bit on what they hoped to get from their SAP solutions. Sports fans, they said, are now consuming these sports through data, as much as by watching the games. Fantasy sports, gambling, even apparel purchases are all driven by data. So providing more of that data to sports fans will only increase fan loytalty. Whether it's draft data or biometric data direct from the players, these companies are looking into new ways of using this data to increase customer (aka fan) engagement.

But the keynote panel was only the start of the customer best practices. The ASUG sessions over on the South Concourse were packed with useful case studies on a variety of topics. Aerospace firm Rockwell Collins described its user training strategy which included establishing a change management office in the company.

Entegris' Helen Frericks outlined the proper care and feeding for a successful super user program, providing a six-point plan to rebuilding your super user program. "Super users are often the first to get hired by other companies," she said. "Some don't get used after go-live and get bored and don't volunteer the next time around."

Dutch brewing giant Heineken provided a detailed look at its SAP testing strategy in another session, providing seven testing principles it used to standardize its programs.

The ASUG keynote wrapped up the day and author Seth Godin provided his very unique take on...human behavior? It was an engaging and active presentation to end an engaging and active day.

 Well that's it for me for now. More tomorrow.

@Daveatwispubs 

Anyone involved in the SAP world has no doubt heard a lot and has probably been talking a lot about SAP HANA, SAP's in-memory solution. With SAPPHIRE NOW coming up there's sure to be even more news about the latest innovations fueled by SAP HANA, and rightfully so. I'm not going to take down any kittens here, but SAP HANA really is that innovative of a technology with direct benefits to a number of business processes and industries.

The next step for you, the SAP customer, is to determine how this technology applies to your business and processes. There's a LOT of information out there about SAP HANA, and while I'm all for more information, I also know information overload can lead to avoidance.

But when you really get down to it, to effectively evaluate any technology, there are three perspectives you really need to get beyond those of your own company.

1. The vendor's perspective. You need to understand how the vendor describes the technology, its value, and evaluate the vendor's commitment to the technology. 
2. The customer's perspective. There is perhaps no better way to find out if a technology is right for you than benchmarking with some current users of the technology. 
3. An independent third-party's perspective. You need a knowledgeable person with no skin in the game to give you the no-holds-barred perspective on a technology.

Finding and gathering those perspectives for SAP HANA might be a lot of work for the average SAP customer. To make it easier for SAP customers to get the full 360-degree view of SAP HANA the editors of SAPinsider and insiderPROFILES have teamed up to compile an entire issue dedicated to SAP HANA and provide all three of those perspectives in one package.

To provide the vendor's perspective, Steve Lucas, Executive Vice President of Database and Technology, starts off by describing the progression of SAP HANA from inception to its current state. On the other end of the spectrum, Irfan Khan, CTO of the Database & Technology division, provides an inside look at SAP's future plans for SAP HANA.

"Where will this path take SAP HANA next?" Khan proposes in his article. "As the volume and diversity of data collected and analyzed continue to expand, data center space will become an issue for many of the most forward-thinking companies. SAP has prepared for increasingly limited space by offering applications powered by SAP HANA in the cloud."

To supplement those perspectives, Dan Kearnan, Senior Director of Marketing for SAP HANA, provides a detailed breakdown of the most current SAP HANA use cases (see an exclusive interview with Kearnan below) while Ron Wessels, Senior Director, outlines the SAP Startup Focus program and how it’s fueling the future of SAP HANA.

But while vendor perspectives are important, real-world customer experience is what really tells the story of a technology. To provide that perspective, this issue includes case studies from companies in a wide swath of industries and experience levels. From early adopters of SAP HANA including Medtronic and Surgutneftegas, to more recent implementors such as WeissBeerger, The Globe and Mail, Eby-Brown, ARI, and Colgate-Palmolive.

And who better to provide the independent analyst's perspective than Joshua Greenbaum. True to form, Greenbaum provides an extremely well-informed perspective on SAP's in-memory journey and value, as only he can.

Like any technology, SAP HANA is going to change, grow, and find new applications as creative users and developers get more access. This special edition provides a snapshot in time, detailing the growth of SAP HANA and how it is being used today while providing a sneak peek at where SAP HANA may go next.

Download the special SAP HANA edition now

Bonus for Insider Learning Network members! Watch this exclusive interview with Dan Kearnan of SAP recorded live at BI 2013 in Las Vegas. Kearnan candidly discusses adoption rates, misconceptions and implementation tips for  SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA.