CIO 100 Winners Invest in IT, People to Lead Business Innovation

Maybe the buzz is not quite as loud as last month’s iPhone launch, but this year’s CIO 100 Awards have a special feel to them, perhaps because this year is CIO’s 20th anniversary.

CIO 100: IT Innovation

Quiz: Are You Innovative?

100 Innovative Projects

3 Keys to Innovation Success

Every year for the past 20 years, CIO has celebrated 100 organizations (and their people) that use information technology in innovative ways to deliver business value. This anniversary year we took it a step further, identifying 100 CIOs who not only innovated but also transformed their enterprises through IT, creating competitive advantage by optimizing business processes, improving customer relationships and enabling growth. And how did they do all that good stuff? We surveyed our CIO 100 honorees to see what they have in common—what made them winners and leaders in the marketplace. Check out these statistics and see how you compare:

• Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of our winners reported that their IT budget increased over last year. Only 18 percent said their budget declined, and 20 percent stayed flat.
• Forty-three percent said their IT department’s headcount increased over last year. Only 16 percent said headcount decreased, while 41 percent stayed level.
• The vast majority (78 percent) of CIO 100 honorees said that IT is coleading innovation initiatives with business executive sponsors. One in five (21 percent) maintained that IT is leading innovation initiatives enterprisewide.
• Over half reported that a dedicated team within the IT department is responsible for vetting emerging technologies that might contribute to business innovation.
• Nearly all (99 percent) of the winning CIOs said that some portion of their role is focused on bringing ideas for IT-enabled business innovations to the table.
• The top five technologies this year’s honorees said they plan to leverage in the coming year to support innovation are virtualized servers, business intelligence/data mining, enterprise portals, wireless, and Web services.

So, how do you stack up?

Join me in congratulating the CIO 100 Class of ’07, and I hope to see you celebrating in grand fashion at the CIO 100 Symposium and Awards Ceremony Aug. 19 to 21.