ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK: Rise of the IT geek changes face of corporate leadership
A radical shift is coming in the role of chief information officers, as their responsibility for information technology strategy evolves into a core business strategy role. The result may well be that many of the business leaders of the near future will come from the ranks of CIOs, in much the same way that most of today's CEOs have emerged from financial roles. For example, surveys show that one in four CEOs of the UK's top 100 companies are chartered accountants, and more than half have a financial background. However, financial performance is now so heavily dependent on technology strategy that the demands of the top spot are changing, according to Bask Iyer, CIO of both computer giant Dell Technologies and its cloud computing subsidiary, VMware. Having performed the CIO role for 25 years in companies as diverse as engineering conglomerate Honeywell and healthcare group GlaxoSmithKline, he believes no industry is immune to this change. "The role of the CIO has changed every singl...
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