You IT managers are a risk-averse bunch. Given the opportunity to stick your neck on the line with a risky project implementation, you will probably draw your head back off the block and go for a less hazardous and less interesting development.

Analyst Gartner recently found that while most technology leaders agree that innovation matters, few have taken the management actions necessary to ensure it happens.

Why the fear of change and originality? Why the fear of doing something different? One answer might be found in the commonly quoted adage that suggests no IT manager ever lost his or her job by selecting Microsoft.

Technology bosses are scared that choosing the less popular Linux operating system at the desktop level, for example, might incur the chief executive’s wrath in the event of a breakdown.

But there is also a chance UK IT is being hamstrung by technology leaders’ decisions not to go with out-of-the-ordinary systems and innovations.

Lisa Hammond, chief executive and founder of consultant Centrix, says good technology management is about trial and error. She says she knows one retail bank that undertakes 300 web-based innovations a year.

Each development has four weeks to impress the business. If it works, great. If it fails, the bank shuts it down.

Successful projects are put out to tender, with smaller, innovative organisations used to create fully-formed services.

The process helps the retail bank make the most of other pioneering organisations, allowing the over-burdened IT manager to concentrate on running the business.

It is an important priority setting process. Organisations still spend more than a third of their budgets on internal development and maintenance, according to researcher Datamonitor. But at the same time, the majority of IT budgets are expected to rise this year, and a high proportion are also expected to increase in 2008.

So shouldn’t you be taking a few more risks in the hope that some of your revolutionary technological developments pay off?

As a first step, create an innovation network to ensure everyone in the business knows what everyone else is doing and is aware of the products that are being shaped. Then develop a chief of innovation role that reports into the technology leadership position.

The only risk you might incur in this strategy is that you might generate a host of money-saving concepts – and that is a threat that you should have been preparing for a long time ago.