Module 1
A Brave New World
Edie Weiner: As a result of rapidly converging very different technologies, we move
from one economy and one age into another. And it changes everything. When TI
introduced the first handheld calculator it was $1500. And today, there’s more
computing capacity in a singing birthday card. We’re moving ahead at breakneck speed and
there will be no time for rest.
Adam Hartung: We’re no longer amanufacturing economy. We’re in an information economy.
And boards need to be saying thatinformation and that knowledge content, that’s how we produce most of our profits. That’s howwe makemost of our money.
IT Governance: A Strategic Imperative
Rob Clyde: In this day and age, technology is just crucial to any strategy. To have a strategy
without takingaccount of recent innovations and where technology is headed is probably going
to fail in most businesses.
Technology Should Drive Strategy
Gail Coury: We’ve seen many companies that were very large and successful in one
particular way of delivering technology when they didn’t pay attention to how the
consumer’s changing the way they want to consume their services or their products
that they’ve gotten lost.
Adam Hartung: What’s really important is that at the time when we see new technologies coming into the market, when they’re very nascent and we don’t know if they’re ever going to amount to anything is when you really want to start that conversation. Because at some point far in the future this could have a big impact on our business.
Steve Weber: Technology should be an enabler. Because if technology truly becomes a driver of business strategy, then what happens is people start talking about the types of business problems they’re trying to solve or the opportunities they’re trying to take advantage of.
Gail Coury: You want to be the disrupter and not the one that’s being disrupted. So you’ve got to have a staff and organization that supports that innovation within your business.
Steve Weber: Most board members really don’t know what they need to worry about as it relates to technology.
Adam Hartung: Often times the agenda in a board of directors meeting is set up to talk about what are our results and how have we been doing in our existing businesses. ... It’s all related generally to the core of the business.
Gail Coury: Boards need to have a pulse on you know what’s going on within the organization and to ensure that someone who’s a technologist is looking at these emerging technologies and taking advantage of those.
Marc Snyder: It’s important for the board to exhibit a commitment- more than just an interest, but a commitment to understanding how technology can drive value and the role that it can play.
Virginia Gambale: So how do we begin to solve the dilemma of more innovative emphasis when we address our corporate strategy? Whether you use an outside firm to help you do that or you have someone on your board who helps to really integrate that, someone has to be able to drive that into the conversation.
Marc Snyder: Communication is an essential element of the relationship that a CIO can build with the business executives. This is built upon the ability to articulate the implications of technology in not only helping the business advance its strategies but in also in terms of being able to help the business deliver on its current mission.
Virginia Gambale: If we are able to have the right conversation, then we can talk about how do we make the customer experience more efficient end to end, in a way that is not a competitive advantage, but actually will leapfrog our competitors.
Rob Clyde: What excites me the most about the landscape that we have today is that never before have we had the kind of data and compute power at our fingertips to predict likely outcomes, making success far greater. We are on the cusp of solving some of the world’s greatest problems.
Gail Coury: Technology is really allowing us to live different kinds of lives. And I think
business is taking advantage of that. We’re seeing it in every industry. We’re just at the cusp of what true advancement is going to be.