While we associate digital business models and products mostly with companies like Amazon, Google, Uber and the like traditional organisations and multinationals are changing their internal structures and governance in order to trim their business towards digital innovations and fight back new entrants.
You can find many C-level executives with a digital and technological focus called CIOs, CDOs and CTOs in many of today’s organisations but what do these abbreviations stand for and what is their role within the organisation?
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is traditionally the company’s top technology infrastructure manager. One of the key functions is to run the internal IT operations. Thus, the CIO has typically and traditionally an internal focus and tries to develop strategies to increase the company’s profitability.
In comparison the Chief Digital Officer’s (CDO) responsibility is mainly to experiment with new digital platforms and new digital customer offerings. It can be argued that in an organisation that acts and thinks already digital, in fact a CDO’s role would be obsolete as any employee would have incorporated a digital focus.
A Chief Technological Officer (CTO) on the other hand has primarily an external, client focus as he serves as the company’s top technology architect and runs the organisation’s engineering group to develop innovative products. Thus, he mainly tries to increase the organisation’s top line (revenue) in contrast to the CIO.
Nowadays however, as multinationals see that they have to be more agile to respond to the challenges posed by fast growing startups and tech companies we see these roles and some of their responsibilities merging towards one top executive, the CIO.
Back a decade ago there was a rather grim joke that CIO stands for “Career is over” but this has changed due to the CIO having a much more prominent and strategic role and as IT is finally perceived as an competitive advantage.
Thus, the perception of IT changes from being a pure cost driver and support function towards being a strategic and value adding function. Moreover, according to the Sloan Management Review the CIO’s ability to add value is the biggest single factor in determining whether the organisation views IT as an asset or a liability.
The question remains however whether the CIO position is even needed and if the other traditional board members like CEO, CFO etc. should rather drive digital change and innovative business concepts?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-difference-between-cio-cto-deepak-tiwari/
https://www.cio.co.uk/it-leadership/cio-cdo-differences-3644709/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/01/09/the-evolving-role-of-the-cio-in-2018/#45525c041c8e
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/is-your-cio-adding-value/
