26 January 2006 The death of the IT function has been over-hyped: it is in fact the future of corporate creativity, delegates at the Effective IT Summit were told.

Creativity drives innovation, and nobody is better placed than IT staff to better exploit the creativity realm, said Dennis Sherwood, founder and managing director of creative consultancy group The Silver Bullet Machine Manufacturing Company.

But too often the champion of innovation within an organisation is seen to be the marketing department, followed closely by the research and development department, he added.

The traditional method of the human resources department finding creative people using a series of psychometric testing is a flawed process: “And every psychometric test I collect can be unravelled,” said Sherwood.

Sherwood’s approach to innovation differs sharply from that of Nicholas Carr’s message of IT’s eventual shift to a utility-based model of computing.

Carr had told delegates the vast majority of IT budgets is spent maintaining existing infrastructure and adds little value to the business.

What Carr’s keynote failed to address was the remaining 10% – where IT could foster innovation and build competitive advantage, said Sherwood.