A number of articles recently have discussed the shift in innovation in corporate IT departments from being led by IT professionals to users who bring their home tech into the office. With the freewheeling experimentation and innovation happening on the Internet these days (mostly under the far-too-generic rubric of “Web 2.0”) and the widespread consumer adoption of WiFi at home before the office, are your users bringing new ideas and technologies to you, or are you still leading them?

Law and professional service firms tend to be even more conservative than corporations in adopting technology, so such an infusion of new ideas is more limited. Younger associates and new hires, however, have pushed web collaboration and handheld adoption into firms. There is nothing wrong with getting ideas from your users as they experiment with tech at home. This idea exchange often leads to thought-provoking discussions, like what can a web-based application like Netvibes give me for a portal solution that more traditional and entrenched players like BEA/Plumtree and SharePoint can’t? IT departments shouldn’t feel threatened that they are not bringing all the technology ideas to the table, but should embrace them. IT is better able to discern which ideas will work and provide value in the organization.