The evolving role of the CIO was the primary topic for discussion recently at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. Many in the IT industry gathered to listen to a series of roundtable discussions about CIOs and how they can drive more efficiency within their organizations. There were a few hundred CIOs, vendors and key industry thought-leaders in attendance. The day consisted of a series of panel sessions which explored topics like, “What Every CIO Should Know About the Future Impact of Digital Business,” “Collective Intelligence and Social Networks,” “Enterprise Analytics & Business Values” and “The Evolving CIO Role in Cloud and Mobile Computing Environment.”

Some of the highlights from the discussions and the presenters will be noted below.

According to David Castellani, the chief executive of New York Life Retirement Plan Services, chief information officers need to think more like chief executives if they want a seat at the CEO’s table. He also said that CIOs too often content themselves with finding technology that fits a company’s existing strategies, rather than using technology to actually define new strategies. “I don’t want to hear about aligning technology with the business. Being a CEO requires a different mindset. For example, how do you replace legacy systems to free up that capital for development,” he said. Most CIOs will struggle with legacy systems that they have inherited when the take over the top IT spot. If  they are not careful they can become real boat anchors and derail innovation.

Other discussion panelists noted that CIOs’ familiarity with technology could be used in other parts of the business and could help change the ways companies function. Brian Halligan, the chief executive of Hubspot,  said most companies are still organized according to command-and-control principles inspired by the military, and don’t take into account societal and technological changes that make knowledge workers more nimble and project-oriented. Mr Halligan thinks CIOs could help reorganize companies internally, from how employees are assigned jobs to who they report to. “Technology should lead that change in culture, and the CIO should take the lead for that in the organization.”

Mr. Halligan also said CIOs are the logical choice to help chief executives master new communication tools like blogging, Facebook and Twitter. Some chief executives are possibly uncomfortable using those media outlets and will hire others – most probably PR types to work those channels for them. The CEO audiences can sense the lack of spontaneity as a result. CIOs can help their CEOs “have a more authentic relationship with the market and vendors,” he said.

Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT Sloan’s school of digital business, said CIOs can demonstrate business acumen that many of their peers think they lack by showing off their number-crunching skills. Companies are trying to use more and more data to drive decisions, but reports can be flawed if the quality of the data is poor. “CIOs should know the right questions to ask and have the analytic skills to get rid of the noise” in the data, he said.



With all of the advances in the development of Cloud Computing and the major Cloud service providers, there has been some discussion about the changing role of the CIO. Some have even suggested that the acronym should be redefined to mean “Chief Innovation Officer” or “Chief Infrastructure Officer.” 

Each of the panel sessions tried to examine how CIOs should try move past the common challenge of helping their CEOs and end-users capitalize on the rich data stores within their systems. During most sessions the panelists referred to various ways in which they are employing Cloud services to generate, capture, analyze and disseminate valuable data. This data was previously unavailable or unusable because of the complexities and costs of traditional, legacy systems and software. 

CIOs from a variety of industries each revealed the various ways they are implementing Cloud solutions to address a variety of business concerns. Their goal in leveraging Cloud services is already shifting from simply cutting costs or accelerating resource deployment to developing new business innovations and creating new forms of competitive advantage. 

The day ended with a panel session entitled, “Cloud Computing Spectrum: From Low Hanging Fruit To Game-Changing Transformation.” This session focused on where and how companies are currently leveraging Cloud resources to achieve their business objectives and pursue new innovations. The panelists included the CIO from instrumental systems vendor Thermo Fisher Scientific. They are using the Cloud to track and measure business operations across various mobile devices. 

There was nearly universal agreement from all speakers about of the potential power of Cloud resources to attack business intelligence and analytics problems in spite of the universal concerns about privacy, security, control and other important policy issues.

One thing is clear from the day’s events, CIOs are now more then ever expected to make contributions which will uncover new revenue and growth opportunities for companies. Many of these CIOs will now report to CEOs as they are no longer perceived as back office specialists. They are expected to use the cloud to bring their companies to an increased competitive position to win market share.

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