Elspeth Murray is associate professor of strategy and management information systems at Queen's University School of Business and an advisor to several start-ups and CEOs. Long-term success is all about changing well in advance of being forced to do so, yet a lot of organizations either change too slowly or live in denial. "The first thing is you'd better be able to recognize the signals out there that indicate it is time for change," says Murray. How do you avoid being blind-sided in the area of transformation?

While transformation or drastic change has become a necessity for some companies, transformation for the sake of transformation isn't the answer either. Knowing when the status quo isn't working anymore ­ and when to reinvent your business ­ is the key to successful transformation. Here are seven examples of companies who have embarked on successful transformation through the use of information technology.

Dr. Julian Barling is one of the world's leading scholars in the field of organizational behaviour and has researched the concept of leadership for the past 12 years. "You've got to know your core beliefs and the rest of it is just extraordinarily hard work," he says.

For CIOs, innovation is less about finding the right technology and more about applying innovative thinking to understanding the business. CIOs are a diverse group, and applying the skills of leadership varies widely depending on personality of the leader and circumstances. Here are seven examples of innovative thinking from seven CIOs.

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Innovation does not just happen, it must be encouraged, says John Pliniussen, associate professor and director of Queen's Business Consulting. Nor is it just about product design, it can also be about new ways of providing customer service, or just about anything the organization performs.

While sitting in a coffee shop one day, Nabil Harfoush came up with a simple concept: Improve customer service by bringing live communications to the Web. His product, called Click-to-Talk, is now on the market, and these days, Harfoush says, the best ideas are coming from his employees and his customers.

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Current prevailing wisdom says understand business needs first, then implement information technology later. But is that always true? Could you be missing out on a technology that can give you the edge over your competition?

The first step to becoming competitive requires total involvement from everybody from front-line workers to back-office employees. How can collective intelligence, which emerges through the collaboration and competition of many individuals, bring your organization to a whole new level of performance?

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