Technology is key to increasing operational efficiency, building agility, becoming more customer-centric and driving innovation. It is fundamental to the creation of new products and services. And it is reshaping the competitive landscape, lowering the cost of entry for smaller companies and enabling competitors to quickly cross traditional industry boundaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cTechnology is in everything,\u201d says Stephanie Woerner, a research scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research. In her research, interviewers have shifted from asking about IT group spending to asking about overall digital spending, because technology is now used\u2014and purchased\u2014by functions ranging from marketing to HR and R&D. Digital technology is woven deeply into the business, and its impact is widespread\u2014 making it a clear CEO issue.<\/p>\n
Ron Cohen M.D., CEO of the Acorda biotech company, notes that in his industry, companies rely on new technologies to manage R&D data, tap into crowdsourcing to find innovative ideas and improve the management of data from field tests. Soon, he expects artificial intelligence and machine learning to streamline processes even more.<\/p>\n
In that environment, he says, \u201cWe have an absolute obligation to understand where the tech world is at any given time, and then understand how it can best be adopted to improve what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
To a great extent, the importance of a tech background for CEOs lies not so much in having deep technology expertise, but rather in attitudes and perspectives. Technology changes so rapidly, and the likelihood of disruption is so great, that tech-company executives are generally more accustomed to making product investments that might look too risky to someone with, say, a traditional finance background.<\/p>\n
For Vonage, a business cloud communications firm, evolving technology has prompted a dramatic shift from Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) platforms for consumers to cloud-based communications products for businesses of all sizes in just a few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven that the world is changing so quickly, if you\u2019re not betting on tomorrow at a healthy percentage of revenue\u2014and each industry is going to be different\u2014you run the risk of being left behind,\u201d says Alan Masarek, the company\u2019s CEO, and a former Google executive. In the tech world, he says, you have to \u201cbe willing to invest, be willing to fail. Because otherwise you\u2019re not going to innovate.\u201d<\/p>\n
In essence, technology leaders are steeped in constant technology-driven change.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who grow up in technology are expecting someone else to come out with something more competitive and better the next day,\u201d says Margot McShane, executive director at the San Francisco office of the Russell Reynolds Associates executive search firm. \u201cThey are constantly assuming that what\u2019s worked in the past will not work in the future. It\u2019s an agile environment of \u2018try, optimize, learn, evolve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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