Why CIOs need to take the lead on digital transformation in 2017
The time has come for CIO's to take the lead on digital transformation, combining their technical knowledge with a deep market analysis on the impact and economic mechanisms of the digital disruption.
Technology has been changing the world as we know it, and in a quite fast pace. Companies that were born with a digital DNA are now taking over the market, and there are no signs that this will change in a near future.
For the past 30 years, the so-called “creative destruction” has been a source of fascination for many professional, researchers and universities. The almost obsessive interest is not surprising, given the ever-changing, never-ending list of transformative threats, which today include the rise of CPS(Cyber-Physical Systems), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality, or, as many like to refer as the 4th Industrial Revolution, mostly known as Digital Transformation, but the question that is constantly in the back of everyone’s minds (especially Technology professionals and leaders) is what does that really mean for companies and for their roles?
No matter how much these topics are being discussed, analyzed and theorized, there’s still a significant gap between the perception of CEOs and Digital experts on who should be leading this Digital Transformation. In one hand, we have the need of a good understanding and knowledge of technology and the applicable tools to digitally transform processes and reinvent platforms, and on the other hand, we have the need of a clear and collaborative strategy and the organizational culture change or adaptation to this new platform. A comparison between Gartner’s 2016 CEO Survey, conducted with 400 CEO’s globally, and Altimeter’s The 2016 State of Digital Transformation, conducted with 500 digital experts globally, illustrates this existing gap of perception: