Dr James Cash who has taught countless executives about IT at Harvard Business School presented at the Oracle Industry Connect event this morning the perspective of a tech-savvy board director. Dr. Cash serves on the boards of GE, Walmart, The Boston Celtics and has previously been on the board of Microsoft and several other companies across industries.
He said every board is under tremendous pressure to become “digital” and there are 5 areas he advises IT to work on
1. Primary focus should be in generating top line growth. He cited GE’s Industrial Internet and Walmart’s move to become a “predictive retailer” as examples. He classified IT spend as “that which allows companies to stay in business” versus “that which assumes we will continue to stay in business”
2. A focus on generating operational efficiency – to be able to generate funds to make the growth investments above.
3. Support for corporate governance especially in a growing global marketplace. The opportunity from new markets has to be balanced with increased needs for local investments. Managing the resulting complex set of investments and resources for effective growth is another area where IT needs to step up
4. Participation in formulation of corporate strategy. He said for years we tried to “align” IT with business. That is passé – he said he is constantly surprised to see even today retailers do not list Amazon as one of their primary competitors
5. Rethink infrastructure. “Most startups would not build what we are trying to manage today”. “We have to be inspired by entrepreneurs”. Most large companies can scale a $ 20 million business and take it to $ 200 million. But going from 0 to $ 20 million still calls for a “distributed innovation” model.
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