Research & Perspectives

The Center is committed to its mission to advance the CIO profession.  The research and perspectives shared with members and provided by members serve as the foundation for our mission-driven work, and provide a road map to develop the key skills and knowledge needed for CIOs to lead their organizations.

The Center seeks out topical, targeted and useful content to provide CIO members with high value perspectives and insights on the key topics to advance the profession.

The Center conducts its own research to compile survey data and core CIO insights to highlight the core strategic competencies that CIOs, their peers and academic leaders have identified as critical to their advancement.

This work is featured in the Skills & Competencies section and covers primary and secondary research as well as CIO points of view in the four core competency areas of:

• Leadership

• Business Strategy and Process
• Innovation and Growth
• Organization and Talent Management

Business & Technology trends and insights are captured and shared in the Business & Technology area of the site.  Here you can find current events related to economic conditions, market trends and relevant geographic changes.  Also contained in this section are top of mind technology trends and challenges.

CIO Leadership Case: Linking IT Investments to Business Value. This case published by the Center for CIO Leadership discusses the process by which the IT group at The Harry Fox Agency, led by CIO and Center member Lou Trebino, aligned IT with the business resulting in the Agency being able to capture new sources of revenue.

Don’t blame your users for their ignorance about IT — train them. In this article published in Computerworld, Center member, Paul Ingevaldson, retired CIO of ACE Hardware and frequent contributor to the IT dialog, points to the importance of educating your users about IT and their role in the system development process.

In an earlier article, "Top 10 qualities of a great IT shop," Ingevaldson provides an overview of the top ten best practices of an IT department.

Together, these articles point to the importance of taking an objective look at the position and strength of your IT department within the larger organizational context and carefully building the IT team to deliver on its value.

If you have an article you would like to share with members, please send a copy of the article to Harvey Koeppel, the Center's Executive Director, for review.

Getting Higher Business Value from IT: The Non-IT Executive View by George Westerman and Peter Weill (both of the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT) presents results of their research on what CIOs at firms getting higher business value from their IT are doing better than other firms. Four pivotal tasks suggest how CIOs should prioritize their objectives.