CIO Succession: 63 Fortune 500 CIO Appointments and What You Can Learn From Them

The Chief Information Officer has evolved from pure information technology management into a central business role. The CIO is responsible for managing the information systems and technology platform that enables everyday business operations, while at the same time finding ways to leverage more cost-effective technologies, more versatile software and better management methods as they emerge. That ongoing challenge of changing the engine while the jet is flying is only the more technical side of the role. Today s large-company CIO can also play key leadership roles in technology-enabled process improvement and business innovation, risk management and compliance, analytical performance management, business model design, and strategy formulation. The CIO needs the technological depth to evaluate new opportunities, together with the business breadth to serve as a versatile member of the executive team. The CIO should be a driver and an interpreter in both these worlds. There is, however, vast variation across companies and industries in their needs, their technological pace and evolution, and their expectations of this critical role. And the CIO role evolves fast, driven both by the pace of technological advancement and by the growing ability of many corporations to put their information and technology to work in new ways. So, even though the CIO role has been around for decades, many corporations and their CEOs are uncertain about the background and capabilities they need in their next CIO. To shed light on the situation and discover trends in who s filling the CIO role, we analyzed CIO appointments over an 18-month period in major companies operating in the United States. What are the basic characteristics of CIOs? What experience, education and background do they bring to the table? To whom do they report? Are they insiders or outsiders? What industries are they recruited from? How fast does the role really turn over? We created this book to share our discoveries and insights.