Rebooting the relationship, getting IT on board!

Just want to start off by saying a huge thanks to Hamzah Shanbari for jumping in and teaming up with me on this topic. We shared some enjoyable conversations during our collaboration!

The innovation vs. IT standoff

A project team stumbles upon a cutting-edge tool, an AI-driven analytics platform, a new field reporting app, or a next-gen visualisation tool. They’re excited about its potential to streamline workflows, reduce errors, or boost efficiency. Leadership gives a nod of approval, and the team is eager to launch a pilot.

Then, the process hits a wall. IT steps in with concerns about security, compliance, integration, and cost. A flurry of emails, meetings, and risk assessments follow. Weeks stretch into months, and enthusiasm fades. By the time IT finally approves the pilot, the project team has either moved on or lost the urgency to deploy. The opportunity for innovation is lost.

Now, flip the script.

An innovation team, frustrated with slow approvals, decides to bypass IT entirely. They set up a cloud-based collaboration tool without running it through security checks. The platform gains traction fast; teams love it, productivity skyrockets, and everything seems fine. That is until the client discovers their sensitive project data was inadvertently exposed due to lax security settings. A compliance breach follows; relationships are damaged, and IT has to scramble to contain the fallout.

These scenarios are all too familiar in the AEC industry. The disconnect between IT and innovation isn’t just about approvals but trust, priorities, and alignment. If we keep treating IT as a roadblock rather than a partner, tech pilots will continue to stall or cause real harm when implemented incorrectly.

It’s time to reboot the relationship, shifting IT from a gatekeeper to an enabler of innovation.

But let’s pause for a moment—what’s the real purpose behind rebooting this relationship? Is it simply to speed up IT approvals, or is there something deeper at stake?

In 2007, Eurostar invested nearly £6 billion to shorten the London-to-Paris travel time by 20 minutes. While impressive, British advertising expert Rory Sutherland famously questioned whether passengers truly valued those 20 minutes. For a fraction of the cost, Eurostar could have installed Wi-Fi on the trains—significantly improving passengers’ travel experience without altering travel time. The true objective wasn’t simply speed; it was making the journey better.

Similarly, in the AEC industry, quicker IT approvals for tech pilots are helpful, but they’re not the ultimate measure of success. Like Eurostar’s passengers, project teams and clients don’t simply value speed—they value reliability, security, productivity, and ease of use. The ultimate goal of rebooting the IT-innovation relationship isn’t just streamlining approvals or reducing friction but also creating a sustainable innovation ecosystem.

In other words, rebooting the relationship between innovation and IT is the equivalent of adding Wi-Fi to the journey. It’s not just faster or cheaper; it changes how innovation happens altogether. It ensures that every tech pilot isn’t just another test run but a real step forward in getting better results for everyone involved.

With that bigger picture in mind, let’s dig into why the connection between innovation and IT tends to get rocky in the first place.

Why the relationship is strained

At the core of these conflicts are fundamental differences in priorities between IT and innovation teams. IT’s primary focus is on stability, security, and compliance. Their role is to protect company data, ensure system reliability, and prevent costly mistakes. Every new tool introduced into the system represents an unknown risk: potential vulnerabilities, integration challenges, and compliance concerns that could disrupt operations or expose the company to liability. From IT’s perspective, their job isn’t to slow things down for the sake of it; it’s to ensure that new technologies don’t create more problems than they solve.

On the other hand, innovation teams prioritise speed and impact. They focus on solving real-world problems quickly, leveraging emerging technologies to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and enhance productivity. For them, slow-moving approval processes and excessive risk aversion are unnecessary obstacles to progress. They see IT as a bottleneck, while IT sees them as reckless. But beyond this, there’s often a mutual lack of understanding—innovation teams may not fully grasp security and compliance complexities. At the same time, IT may not recognise that specific tools exist within a “safe ecosystem” that could be adopted with minimal risk. This fundamental disconnect, risk mitigation versus rapid experimentation, is why so many pilots stall before they even begin.

For example, an IT team once removed Python 2.7 version from company machines, unaware that this rendered critical Grasshopper and Dynamo workflows unusable. Innovation teams, caught off guard, scrambled to find workarounds—some resorting to using dedicated offline machines just to run their scripts. The problem wasn’t IT enforcing security updates; it was the absence of a shared understanding of which tools were essential and how changes impacted day-to-day operations.

The tension between these goals isn’t inherently bad; both perspectives are valid. The problem is when these teams operate in silos instead of working together.

Other underlying causes of friction include:

• Past experiences: IT teams that have been burned by previous pilots gone wrong tend to tighten restrictions.
• Limited resources: IT teams are often stretched thin, managing multiple systems while being asked to vet every new tool.
• Cost and operationalisation concerns: Even if a pilot succeeds, who pays for scaling it? How does it integrate with existing solutions? If the new tool replaces spreadsheets or an outdated system, is the company ready to operationalise it?

Understanding these tensions is the first step toward bridging the gap.