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Quick Take: The CIO and the CEO
Overview
In the past, chief information officers (CIO) and chief executive officers (CEO) have tried to live together. In the 1980s and for most of the 1990s, their paths rarely crossed — the CEO didn't think much about technology and the CIO rarely interacted with executives beyond his boss — the chief financial officer (CFO). Most CEOs perceived IT, or BT (business technology), as an important underpinning of company operations, but not as a critical strategic tool. Added to this general ambivalence were high-profile cases of CEOs having their reputations and budgets scorched by IT/BT projects gone awry: Perpetual IRS systems overhauls, Citibank's futile effort to create a "single customer view" in the mid-1980s, and early-1990s' SAP R3 "kitchen sink" leaps of faith.
With the dot-com collective insanity, CEO panic set in (Amazoning, etc., etc.). In informal surveys of 25 large-company CEOs, when asked how much time they spent on technology issues, their response was "25%." No CEO — not even a techie — could afford to devote a quarter of their time to systems. But they were spending more time on tech then they had five years earlier — even Jack "I've never used email" Welch, on his way out at GE, started talking about the digitization of business. Michael Porter, every CEO's favorite academic, got into the act with a naïve Harvard Business Review piece on the Internet in early 2001, just as the curtain came crashing down on The Web, Act One.
| Publisher | Forrester Research | File Format | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date Published | February 2007 | Downloads | 28 |
| Format | Research | ||
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