The CIO as VC

Clark Golestani, CIO of Merck, has adapted McKinsey’s Three Horizons framework for his IT organization at the $44B pharmaceutical company. In the McKinsey model, Horizon One includes the core products and markets that provide the majority of a company’s revenue. Horizon Two covers emerging products...

IT leaders need to overcome the myths that keep hurting IT's reputation. Stereotypes, ignorance, and misinformation. They're all still conspiring to create the impression that IT departments are more of an obstruction than an asset to businesses....

You are the “CIO” of your organization, and the expectations and pressure couldn’t be higher. Your goal is to be an extraordinary leader with a transformative impact on your company and for your customers. The good news is there’s no shortage of guidance available regarding how to do so. But as you begin absorbing the contents of the many books, articles, conferences, blogs, tweets, videos and other posts on the topic, not to mention the daily tugs on your time from myriad stakeholders, you may begin to ask yourself: “Exactly what is my role anyway?

As the infrastructure of digital technology — the chips, network connections, computing — becomes ever cheaper, they’re becoming commodities, and the value of tech products is shifting to the design and the user experience. That’s the underlying thesis for why Gigaom launched its annual experience...

In addition to managing the IT agendas of their companies, CIOs must build a second agenda of Business Technology (systems, technology, and processes to win, serve, and retain customers). The IT agenda focuses internally on supply chains, financial systems, and administrative technology....

First, let me admit my bias. I wear a gorgeous 14k gold Swiss watch everywhere but in the water. The thought of replacing it with an Apple Watch would, for me, feel like replacing a great dinner with brightly colored and beautifully shaped nutritional tablets....

While a well-positioned façade of a castle can create the illusion of a fully-fortified castle, real people’s data requires more than the illusion of security; it requires real data-protection-security. Google’s outsize ability to create the illusion of data-protection-security is particularly apt given that Eran...