THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE CIO

The role of the CIO is changing. In fact, it's at a tipping point. We, as CIOs, have an opportunity to lead business transformation in our organizations.

And I think the centerpiece of that transformation will be around innovation.

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

In the past, as CIOs we tended to focus on technology. In today's world, technology for technology's sake will not cut it anymore. We really do have to focus on integrating business with technology. It should always start with,

"What is the business value, the business return?" And we should always view technology as simply an enabler to delivering that business value.

BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION

Innovation extends beyond products and services. Business model innovation is another key area that CIOs need to be focused on. I believe we can have an impact on the business model by really taking a focus and understanding our processes across our organization. There's no one better in the enterprise than the CIO (who has that end-to-end view of the enterprise) to really understand and impact our business processes and business models. It's all about simplification. It's all about delivering value. And that process focus will enable us to really help transform the business model.

COLLABORATION

There are many different ways we enable collaboration in IBM. We use wikis extensively. We were an early adopter of blogs, and have thousands of bloggers in IBM. We use Sametime® as a mission-critical application across all of IBM, with over 200,000 active sessions in process at any given point in the day. We also use tools like our e-mail systems around Lotus Notes®, with team rooms and other capabilities, to bring our employees together. More and more, our intranet site, and what we're doing with what we call our on demand workplace, is a central place for employees to go gather information, to do their jobs, and to connect with other IBMers.