“ I spend at least 30% of my time on innovation.” Anonymous, CIO, leading Chinese telecommunications company Digital-ready CIOs innovate Chart 7 Areas in which CIOs actively engage with the executive 2relentlessly. management team Digital-ready CIOs strongly see the need to bring innovation both at Discussing business performance 63% a business model level and in terms of new products and services — and challenges 55% something picked out by 81% of digital-ready CIOs, well ahead of Participating in strategic 57% the 64% of IT-intensive industry CIOs overall. They’re far more often decision-making 45% exploring how to create new mobile interfaces or e-commerce solutions, or considering how social media can be used to reinvent Discussing mergers 37% customer service, and uncovering new data-driven insights. and acquisitions 27% “My job is to find interesting new ideas and innovations, and bring Discussing IT's role in research and nt 65% development of services and products e 50% them back to the CEO to discuss which of them could fit into our m e ag business,” says Alexander Gornyi, the CIO of Mail.Ru, the Russian Providing facts as basis for g 70% n e strategic decisions internet communication and entertainment company. “We don’t c i 55% g e trade in oil; we trade in innovation, so IT needs to be far closer to t a Discussing IT's role in r 87% t the decision-making in our business.” Overall, 71% of digital-ready business transformation S CIOs strongly affirm that they are responsible for driving disruptive 72% new technologies — such as cloud, mobile and analytics — within the Discussing IT budgetary issues and 78% business, compared with just 51% of IT-intensive industry CIOs. infrastructure management 73% All CIOs focus on issues relating to business performance and IT Digital-ready CIO IT-intensive industry CIO budgets, but digital-ready CIOs are far more engaged in the question of how to open new markets. For example, about two-thirds (65%) of (Percentage of respondents who have chosen 8, 9 or 10 on a scale from 1 = do not engage digital-ready CIOs are strongly engaged in discussing IT’s role in at all to 10 = actively engage) researching and developing new services or products with the executive management team, compared with just 50% of IT- As CIOs show where and how they can use digital to innovate, intensive industry CIOs overall. “I spend at least 30% of my time on innovation then becomes part of what is expected of them. “In our innovation,” remarks the CIO of a major telecommunications business, the board’s expectation is that IT is the innovation force operator in China, who asked to remain anonymous. “I have 100% that can change the business in the future,” explains the CIO of a influence on technology innovation, which requires that I have both major Chinese insurance firm, who asked to remain anonymous. a technology background and also an understanding of corporate Her work in using mobile and analytics to drive greater sales is strategy and operations.” representative of where this role is headed (see next trait for more). 22 | Born to be digital