Since the arrival of Scott Spradley as CTO at Tyson Foods two years ago from his previous post as CIO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he’s been pushing the poultry conglomerate to take huge steps to modernize its IT infrastructure and tech philosophy.
Last year he embarked on a journey to get his company weaned off of so many customized legacy applications—which at the time accounted for 55% of its software stack—and he’s driving the firm to cloud upgrades and more innovative uses of technology. This includes investigating the use of drones to help monitor processing plan machinery performance and using blockchain for food safety and logistics.
In a piece for CNBC this week, Spradley says that he lives by three rules of enterprise innovation when evaluating new technology and investments for Tyson, rules which he says many IT leaders could be guided by:
- Adopt technologies that meet a business imperative, not necessarily those that drive the headlines.
- Deliver and demonstrate value at costs that are associated with the right outcome and scale.
- Build a “maker mentality” throughout the business to increase interest and awareness of emerging technologies from the C-suite to the back office.
To read more about Spradley’s view on innovation, check out the full piece on CNBC.com.
