CIOs are juggling multiple priorities. They’re being asked by the CEO to drive digital business innovation, identify and execute on developing new business models and advance the customer experience.
Long gone are the days when the CIO's primary role was to simply help 'Keep the Lights On'. Thanks to the value they demonstrate in identifying opportunities for improving organizational efficiencies and for leveraging technology to attack new business opportunities, CIOs today are now more widely viewed as a trusted business partner to the CEO and as a key strategic contributor to the executive team.
CEOs fully expect CIOs and technology executives to help them to identify and execute on new business opportunities.
Here's a phenomenon that has added a new dimension of complexity to the CIO's role: The modern CEO understands technology far better than his or her predecessors.
Andy Grove, who passed earlier this year, would be among the first to agree that you always need to test your assumptions and rethink your business plans.
Survival of the fittest has become more acute than ever in today's chaotic business environment. According to a recent study of more than 30,000 publicly-held firms in the U.S. over the past 50 years by Boston Consulting Group, public companies have a one in three chance of being delisted over the next five years, whether because of bankruptcy, liquidation, M&A, or other causes. To help put this in perspective, that's six times the delisting rate that companies faced 40 years ago.
What do tech giants know that other companies don't? What is it about today's consumers that Amazon, Google and Facebook so clearly understand - and that others fail to grasp?
Big Blue is still bogged down by its own legacy strategies. Many of its core sales and marketing strategies, which delivered results in the past, are simply ineffective in today's markets.
The next step of evolution will be even more dramatic: Our computers will become largely invisible, hidden from sight and running continuously in the background of our everyday lives.
While everyone else was focused on the impact of Brexit on various stock markets, I noticed an interesting article about Apple's record-breaking stock buybacks. Yet Apple isn't the only tech company buying back its stock.
As competitive threats and new business models continue to emerge, it's imperative for CIOs to develop a technology roadmap that is agile enough to address the enterprise's business needs three, five, or even ten years down the road. As part of these efforts, and as IT infrastructures and technology requirements have become more complex, it has also become mandatory for CIOs to establish and nurture partnerships with technology companies which expand beyond historical contractual boundaries.
The recent decision was handed down in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that Google does not owe Oracle $9 billion for using 11,000 lines of open-source code when it developed Android, a project with roughly 13 million lines of code.
While the argument over Facebook's algorithms might seem silly to many people, it highlights a potentially serious issue that CIOs and their IT teams need to address.
I had an excellent conversation recently with Jim Fowler, the CIO of GE, in which he spoke with me about the new technology roadmap and future state for successful IT leaders.
Apple watchers never seem to tire of asking when the company will pivot hard toward the enterprise market and re-align its growth strategies to focus on business products. The answer is the same as it always was: Never.
Today’s technology executive plays a pivotal role in helping his or her organization respond to these forces of change. In essence, they serve as conductors to orchestrate the three pillars of organizational success – people, processes, and technology – and to draw upon their unique view of the enterprise to bring these elements into harmony.
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