CIO Archive

Over the years, companies structured their IT into centrally managed departments organized by functional capabilities. The objective was to improve the delivery of information technology by establishing and meeting service levels and lowering the cost of the function. These services were sold or provided back to the business, which ingested them into the respective

Disruption from new technologies and new business models fundamentally changes companies’ competitive positioning. Most CEOs and boards of directors today recognize their business is at risk if they don’t change, as disruptive competitors will gain ascendency over them. Because they recognize the power of disruptive technologies and the need to change, many invest in

Businesses are moving into a software-defined world with usage-based service contracts and an “Everything-as-a-Service” ecosystem of providers. But there’s a problem: Contracts have not kept up with the desire to buy things in an as-a-service model in an ecosystem. Thus, the contracts provide no accurate way to account for usage adjustments that need to

Hackathons, or hackfests, are getting a lot of buzz for being a collaborative, crowdsourced way of generating new product or service ideas. Sometimes they’re even touted for ideas that drive change and create a competitive advantage. But if that’s what you have in mind for a hackathon at your company, prepare for a letdown.

What makes digital technologies so different and disruptive is their potential to enable very substantial business benefits. “Enable” is the key word. Too often, executives see the power of a technology and reason to themselves, “This technology will create significant benefits, so we need to implement it and learn how to use it to

If you’re a CIO or other executive tasked with leading a digital transformation project, chances are high that you’re left-brained oriented — you’re a logical thinker and are very good at solving problems. But be careful when you develop the approach to the transformation. Inevitably you’ll be asked “What’s the solution?” and “What does

Blockchain technology is hard to ignore as practically everybody’s talking about it. That’s understandable because it’s predicted to disrupt the value flows that underpin business transactions and economies as well as create new business models. It has enormous power to solve business problems. But is a blockchain “distributed ledger” secure? Blockchain is still in

Blockchain technology is a red-hot topic in the news these days and in many C-suite discussions. It has wide applicability to many industries and most companies. Like any emerging technology, companies that aren’t first movers tend to look for proven use cases and often wait for the technology to mature. But that may not

There’s no shortage of books, news articles and comments in social media about how artificial intelligence (A.I.) is shaping our future. Although it’s still blazing a trail, we’re on the brink of A.I. disruption that will change all industries and society at a very deep and fundamental level. I believe it will be one

Imagine you’re the new CIO at a global vehicle manufacturing company (with industry-leading products) that now faces stiff competition from new players in its market. The CEO brought you in to lead the company transformation to enable dramatic growth quickly. The management committee had already developed a vision of its future state and developed