How CIOs Can Navigate Massive Technological and Industry Shifts

Key Points

CIOs must first focus on information and how it creates value, then on technology. Major insights include:

CIOs should prioritize information and its value creation before technology.

Big data’s most important source is internal enterprise data, not external.

AlphaGo demonstrates the rise of semantic processing; computers can now understand chess positions and moves.

The core of a business model is market share and profit margin.

Overcapacity will persist because acquiring capacity has become too easy.

In the future, the CIO and CTO roles will merge.

Technology Trends

1. Fusion

Technology is moving from simple IT to a fusion of industrial and information technologies (IT×IT), creating a new era that CIOs must closely watch.

2. Connectivity

While human‑to‑human connections face limits, there remains vast potential in connecting people‑to‑things and things‑to‑things, heralding a pervasive “connected” era.

3. Information

Rapid advances in sensing and data collection have given rise to big data and the early stages of semantic processing, exemplified by AlphaGo’s ability to understand chess.

4. Platforms

Platforms are becoming layered: basic information networks, telecom/Internet services, and then myriad apps and services built atop them, simplifying application development despite underlying complexity.

5. CPS (Cyber‑Physical Systems)

New infrastructure—industrial and informational—forms the foundation for modern public services, industry, and governance.

6. Intelligence

All sectors—industry, management, daily life—are moving toward comprehensive intelligence.

Industry Trends

1. Growth Rate

China’s 6‑7% growth is now considered “medium‑high” and comparable to the post‑World‑War‑II global average.

2. Overcapacity

Despite rising total demand, capacity is easily acquired, leading to chronic overcapacity worldwide, constrained further by environmental limits.

3. Business Model

Companies should focus on two fundamentals: market share and profit margin (or value‑chain position), rather than chasing every new technology.

Innovation Model

Enterprise knowledge management and internal data are the true drivers of innovation; external data is secondary.

Competitive Model

Key metrics are the three rates—overall labor productivity, per‑person utilization, and market share—and the three chains—innovation, industry, and value chains.

Practical Road for CIOs

To translate trends into action, CIOs must:

Upgrade knowledge, skills, and vision to match change.

Collaborate with leaders, peers, and CTOs, recognizing that technology fusion makes separate CIO/CTO roles unsustainable.

Adopt cloud architecture for cost savings and rapid deployment.

Prioritize the right information, its acquisition, and its effective use to generate revenue.

Embrace intelligent manufacturing (Industry 4.0) as a driver of efficiency and quality beyond simple automation.

Career planning for CIOs includes excelling in current duties, adopting a CEO‑level perspective, or pursuing entrepreneurship, but always with a grounded, practical approach.

Acknowledgement

The speech was originally delivered at the 2016 Peking University CIIM Center Expert Seminar and has been republished with permission from CIO Times.