Chief Information Officers aren’t immune to the recession, but they seem to be looking at the current situation as an opportunity rather than a crisis. That’s the view among more than a dozen CIOs who spoke at The Economist’s 7th Annual CIO Agenda, which Modern Media Partners helped to program.
While the conference was off the record, we can summarize the consensus that came out without identifying the speakers. CIOs see the current recession as a chance to revitalize their organizations. It’s a great time to get needed talent, since lots of good people are available, and the right time to work with the business side and vendors to align strategy, take some risks and facilitate changes in the organization that will position it for fast growth in the recovery.
CIOs are prioritizing their investments and, because of the downturn, they aren’t putting money into anything with an ROI of longer than two years. But they see the recession as a chance to help lead their businesses — pushing their IT and business colleagues to develop innovative products. As one said, this is the time to be the grit in the oyster to stimulate the team to be innovative and produce the pearl.
In a luncheon keynote speech that was on-the-record, Jeff Jarvis talked about his new book “What Would Google Do?” He encouraged the CIOs to take advantage of new open technologies and relinquish traditional centralized control. “If you give people control, they will use it. If you don’t, you will lose them,” he said.
In another keynote, Mickey McManus, President and CEO of MAYA Design, talked about how CIOs must tame complexity as we move toward a trillion-node network of intelligent devices.
He noted that half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores actually work fine, they’re just too complex for consumers to figure out. They take an item back for a refund if they can’t figure out how to operate it in 20 minutes. That costs $13.8 billion in lost sales per year in the United States. Focus on ease of use early in product development because human-centered design pays, McManus said.
