In this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, we focus on a topic that is dear to my heart and to that of many IT professionals I know: innovation in IT departments. This topic is dear to me because, as one who received his PhD in information systems in the late 1990s -- a "child of the dot-com era," if you will -- I grew up during a time when, to put it with the words of Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com: "IT moved from back-of-the-house liability to center stage competitive weapon, the greatest time in history to be an IT professional."1 As a wide-eyed doctoral student, I loved the excitement every morning would bring — what new intriguing (and often wacky) applications of IT will we hear about today? What new business models were organizations cooking up to use new technology and networks to create economic value?