Innovation...
One is not truly innovative unless your audience notices your innovation.
I see too many IT organizations focus on infrastructure innovation while ignoring and stagnating the end user Experience. To often IT makes decisions about the UI using 20th century restraints as decision points and forcing user’s to deal with the status quo or building new UI using least common denominator technology like the Web Browser when they do not have to. Building compelling UI using a Web Browser as the client is a daunting task, despite new tools on the horizon; IT still is focusing too much on the middle and backend layers.
Have you seen the new stuff that can be done using WinForms and SmartClient technologies and the new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) coming out later this year? (If not check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/ and http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx) The web browser is great, but leverage the architectural infrastructure being built around with Service Oriented principles to deliver the best user experience regardless of channel. We should shift our focus as an industry to radically changing the way humans interact with computers by concentrating on the UI.
Build infrastructures that can support multiple UIs while reusing the same service façades and deliver the best experience possible to your consumers…that will be innovation that your audience will notice.
