At this year’s annual PC Forum (a ‘Who’s-Who-in-technology’ gathering in the Arizona desert) this week, executives sat down to discuss the challenges CIOs face and to reveal the strategies they use for managing change, competition, and tough times.
“The CIO’s problems are beyond issues that technology can solve,” said conference moderator Esther Dyson as she opened Monday’s panel discussion.
Held every year for more than a quarter century now, PC Forum gathers together executives, entrepreneurs and investors to discuss heavy-weight industry issues. This year, a panel called “The Secret Life of the CIO,” included Shai Agassi, an executive board member at SAP, Dawn Lepore, a vice chairman at financial-services firm Charles Schwab and Rafael Sanchez, CIO at the fast-food chain Burger King.
Opening remarks by Lepore — who was Schwab’s CIO for eight years — provided the overall theme and focus for the panel: “Being CIO is a risk-management job.”
Risk: Competition
At Schwab, for example, competition from other financial services firms frequently plays out on the Internet. When one online broker uses technology to add a new “whiz-bang” trading feature, all the other brokerages scramble to keep up.
The key to successful innovation, Lepore said, is to use technology smarter than competitors. Otherwise, you run the risk of offering just another, commoditized service. Lepore said she would prefer to be first with a service that later needs corrections, than following a competitor’s technology lead.
“Being an early adopter is good,” she said.
Risk: Change
“We are in the middle of a turn around,” said Burger King’s Sanchez, noting Burger King’s management has changed four times in five years.
Launched as a single restaurant in Miami in 1954, Burger King today has more than 11,000 restaurants in 58 countries. But when a consortium of investors bought the company for $1.5 billion in 2002, it was the first time the company had been privately held since 1967.