Last Updated on 16. October 2025 by mgm-marketing
Welcome to the second part of our series ‘IT Strategy Meets Business Goals’. In four consecutive articles, we show how genuine collaboration between business and IT can work in companies – and how you can benefit from it.
The first part discussed the importance of business-IT co-creation in everyday work. Since the separation of IT and business is no longer appropriate, innovative, interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to optimise and accelerate the workflow. This collaboration requires a new understanding of roles and adjustments in leadership and organisation.
The idea of business-IT co-creation is not a theory from innovation labs – it has long been put into practice. Organisations that set out early on to not only modernise their IT, but also to structurally merge it with their business, are now benefiting from faster innovation, greater customer focus and more resilient business models.
Examples of business-IT co-creation
Three striking examples show what co-creation can look like in practice:
ING: Agility as an operating model
The Dutch bank ING has converted its entire company – including IT – to an agile operating model. In so-called ‘squads’, business and IT experts work together on products, customer services or processes. Each unit is cross-functional, responsible for an end-to-end result and can prioritise independently.
What makes ING different:
- No more separation between ‘business’ and “IT”
- Roles such as ‘customer journey expert’ and ‘IT chapter lead’ break down traditional silos
- Clear product responsibility instead of project thinking
Result: Fast release cycles, greater market adaptation, strengthened ownership within the team.
Bosch Digital: Co-creation in an industrial group
With ‘Bosch Digital’, Bosch has created a unit that develops digital products and platforms for all of the group’s business areas – in collaboration with the specialist departments. Instead of working through requirements, the teams jointly design digital services, e.g. in the areas of smart home, automotive or industrial IoT.
What makes Bosch different:
- Interdisciplinary product teams with clear business responsibility
- Focus on platform thinking and scalable architecture
- Combination of engineering excellence and user-centred design
Result: Digital products are created where customer needs, technology and business logic converge – in a team.
Coca-Cola European Partners: Integration through strategic IT merger
As part of a merger of three, Coca-Cola European Partners reorganised its IT organisations. The challenge: a common IT strategy that supports and accelerates the new business model. Not only were systems integrated, but co-creation principles were also introduced – for example, in the development of a new, common data and analytics model.
What Coca-Cola European Partners did differently:
- Strategic IT issues were aligned with business objectives at an early stage
- Internal product teams with mixed business and IT skills
- Joint roadmap development based on business capabilities with the participation of all units
Result: Synergies were not only identified but also realised – through shared responsibility from the outset.
These examples show that co-creation is not tied to company size or industry – but to attitude, structure and leadership. It is not about methods, but about consistently breaking down outdated boundaries.
Strategic guidelines for CIOs
The role of the CIO has changed fundamentally in recent years. From infrastructure administrator to strategic business partner, from cost factor to source of innovation. However, the reality in many companies shows that the structural conditions required to truly fulfil this role are often not yet in place. Co-creation requires an active, courageous CIO – one who not only reacts, but also shapes.
1. From ‘service provider’ to ‘business architect’
In traditional IT models, the CIO acts as an internal service provider: recording requirements, allocating resources, managing projects. This model is outdated. In the co-creation logic, the CIO works with the business to develop digital products, platforms and services – with an entrepreneurial mindset.
Key question: How can IT become an active co-creator of the business model?
2. Rethinking governance: from control to enablement
Effective management remains essential – but not through centralised control, rather through decentralised responsibility. Modern IT governance defines guidelines, not process cages. It promotes personal responsibility, provides orientation through principles and focuses on outcomes rather than activities.
Instruments:
- Principle-based governance frameworks
- Decision rights models
- Lightweight architecture boards
Key question: How much governance is necessary – and how little is enough?
3. Target systems as a bridge: OKRs, KPIs & Co.
One of the biggest challenges in business-IT collaboration is the lack of a common language. Different success metrics, time horizons and logics prevent understanding and effectiveness. Target systems such as OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) can close this gap – if they are strategically synchronised and developed jointly.
Practical example:
- Joint OKRs for product teams from business & IT
- KPI trees with shared ownership models
- Strategic scorecards across departmental boundaries
Key question: What goals do business and IT share – and how do we make progress visible?
4. Transformation as a management task – not as a project
The introduction of co-creation structures is not a change project, but a strategic transformation. It requires new roles (e.g. product owner, business technology partner), new leadership cultures (e.g. trust instead of control, principles instead of rules) and new ways of thinking (e.g. negotiation instead of directives). This change cannot be delegated – it must be actively exemplified by IT leadership.
Key question: Which old patterns do we need to actively unlearn?
A CIO who truly enables co-creation needs the courage to embrace gaps, openness to interdisciplinary work – and the ability to think of IT not just as a cost centre, but as a value-adding unit. That is precisely where the strategic difference lies today.
In the third part of our series, we set out for new horizons and take a look at IT as a platform and business as an API.
